Another Narrative Busted As Grand Jury Finds Nolan Wells' Death

The grand jury in Mississippi did what too many politicians in Washington couldn't: it looked at the actual evidence. After weeks of speculation, the panel declined to charge the friends who were with Nolan Wells on that July 4 boating trip. The 18-year-old's death is a tragedy, full stop. But it is not a lynching, and it is not proof of some national epidemic of racial violence. The verdict hands a well-deserved defeat to those who tried to manufacture one.

Remember the original story? Ro Khanna, the California congressman, went on television and hinted that the friends' behavior was suspicious. This wasn't a prosecutor laying out a case; it was a politician playing detective for an audience. Then more Democrats piled on, linking Wells' death to the hanging deaths of Black Americans to paint a picture of a country consumed by hatred. It was reckless at the time. Now we know it was just wrong. The people who spread this story owe the friends and the family an apology, but we won't hold our breath.

Here's what this episode really tells us: for a certain wing of the left, a tragedy is never just a tragedy. It's raw material. That's a cheap way to do politics, and it's corrosive because it trains people to distrust the very institutions—like local law enforcement and the grand jury system—that are supposed to get to the bottom of these things. We're glad the system held up here. A community's grief shouldn't be hijacked to score points. And maybe, next time, the rush to judgment will be a little slower, even if the outrage cycle is fast.