Wells family legal team releases update on forensic examination

The legal team for the family of Nolan Wells are pushing back on any suggestion the family has not cooperated with the investigation into his death.

Attorney Ben Crump and other members of the family’s legal team say Nolan’s parents remain willing to have his phone forensically examined.

Both sides agreed July15 to a jointly coordinated examination involving the digital forensics lab at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College and possibly the FBI.

But the legal team claims the district attorney’s office later gave the family less than 48 hours to turn over the phone, while Nolan’s parents were out of state.

The two sides have apparently not yet agreed on procedures for the examination, including chain of custody and access to the data.

The legal team went on to say the family remains committed to what it calls a careful and complete investigation into Nolan’s death.

The legal team issued the following statement:

“Nolan’s family has not refused to cooperate, and the correspondence with the District Attorney’s Office is proof of that. We agreed on July 15 to examine this phone together, with their experts, our experts, and possibly the FBI. We have continued to expect that the forensic examination of Nolan’s phone would happen exactly as agreed on July 15. In order to preserve the evidence, we asked for a protocol, a chain of custody, and an agreement on what happens to the data. We have yet to receive these details.

“Setting a 48-hour deadline while this family was out of state is not a good-faith path to answers, and it weakens our confidence in the process. Nolan’s parents will not be pulled into a fight over deadlines and logistics. Even in their grief and heartbreak, they are still trying to work with the DA, but they want to be able to trust that this is a fair and impartial investigation and that the agreements made will be honored. They are focused on one thing, and that is finding out what happened to their son.”