Crump said in his statement Monday that investigators had failed to resolve a key question or conclusively show that Wells had drowned.
He said it remains unclear what caused an injury to the back of Wells’ head and noted that authorities had not determined how Wells went into the water, whether by accident or otherwise.
“We don’t know how Nolan died, and neither does the State of Mississippi,” he said. He urged the state to continue investigating and said that if it will not, the Justice Department should.
Crump attached the full findings from the independent autopsy report to his statement.
The results of that autopsy were initially released in July and the pathologist, Dr. Roger Mitchell, said then that Wells’ manner and cause of death could not yet be determined without further investigation.
He said he could not rule out foul play but did not find any fractures or deep tissue injuries on Wells’ body.
Mitchell did identify red discoloration in the soft tissue on the back of Wells’ head, though.
In his final report, released by Crump, Mitchell singled out “unexplained blunt-force injuries to the back of the head and additional areas of [Wells’] back.”
The “circumstances, mechanism, and contribution of those injuries to his death remain unexplained,” Mitchell wrote.
The grand jury report also noted bruising on the back of Wells’ head but found that it “was not a fatal injury” and that the state’s medical examiner and Mitchell, whose name is redacted in the report, disagreed about the presence of bruising on Wells’ ʙuттocks and shoulder.
The grand jury’s report said the panel considered credible evidence concerning how Wells sustained the injury to the back of his head but that the cause of the injury remains uncertain.
“This grand jury result leaves us with more questions than answers,” Crump said in his statement. “Nolan’s family will not rest until we know what happened to him, and neither will we.”
Crump and his team spoke at a news conference Tuesday afternoon with Wells’ parents.