By admin 
The legal team representing the family of Nolan Wells attacked the District Attorney’s Office in South Mississippi on Friday, saying District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath is not operating in good faith in the investigation into the death of the beloved Ocean Springs teen.
Read more Legal team for Nolan Wells’ family accuses DA of not operating in good faith
In a letter sent to McIlrath on Aug. 13, the legal team said that Nolan’s parents remain willing to facilitate a forensic examination of Nolan’s phone, consistent with what the parties agreed to on July 15.
According to the legal team, at that July 15 meeting, the parties agreed to a jointly coordinated forensic examination of the phone using the Digital Forensics Lab at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, with possible FBI involvement.
According to the legal team’s correspondence, no date or time for that examination was ever set. Instead, on Aug. 12 at 11:51 p.m., the District Attorney’s office sent a letter directing the family to deliver the phone to her office by 9 a.m. on Aug. 14, less than 48 hours later. Nolan’s parents were outside Mississippi when that letter was sent and were not scheduled to return before the deadline.
“Nolan’s family has not refused to cooperate, and the correspondence with the District Attorney’s Office is proof of that,” the legal team said in a news release. “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 deadline to turn over Nolan Wells’ phone
Previously, McIlrath said the rules of professional conduct for prosecutors prevent her from making any comments on an active investigation.
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“Our restraint in communicating facts and evidence is not an effort to keep the truth from the public,” McIlrath said in a video on July 23. “It is an effort to protect the integrity of this investigation and the grand jury proceeding. As your district attorney, I have an ethical obligation to avoid public statements that could influence witnesses, prejudice a proceeding, or compromise the fairness of the legal process.”
According to the legal team, the parties have also not agreed on a forensic protocol governing the scope and method of the examination, chain of custody, preservation of the extraction, access to the resulting data, and return of the device. The legal team has asked the District Attorney’s office to send its proposed protocol and has said the examination can be scheduled immediately once it is agreed upon.
“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,” the legal team said in the news release. “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.”
The Sun Herald has asked the legal team representing Wells’ family for copies of correspondence from the DA’s office.
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