India, July 27 -- Crime in the United States is nothing unusual. But what attracts public attention among thousands of deaths registered in the US daily depends on how public sentiment builds around it. The death of 18-year-old Mississippi teen Nolan Wells in Horn Island is one such case behind which public sentiment has been rallying hard for the last few weeks.

The case has been highly contested as the family of the teen, led by civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, has challenged the coroner's branding of the official cause of death as drowning. Accordingly, the family conducted an independent autopsy, the results of which were released last Tuesday at the NAACP. Its results were also inconclusive.

Amid the legal deadlock, which is set to b...