Georgia v. A.J. Scott

The medical examiner stood at the witness stand, describing what she found when she opened up Isabella Chinchilla's body.

A laceration that completely tore through the aorta. The major blood vessel coming straight from the heart. Lacerations of the liver. Blood pooling in the chest cavity and abdomen. A pelvic fracture.

Isabella was sixteen years old.

Somewhere in that courtroom, Leslie Woods was listening. Isabella's mother. The woman who has kept her daughter's bedroom exactly as she left it for nearly a decade. Everything sits in her room as if she was still there, she's said. The photos. The clothes. The dreams that would never be realized.

And now she was hearing, in precise medical terminology, exactly what happened to her daughter's body when a state trooper's patrol car struck the Nissan she was riding in.

Dr. Lora Darrisaw has performed nearly 7,900 autopsies in her career with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. She's been doing this since 2001. She's seen every manner of death imaginable. Car crashes, shootings, stabbings, drownings, overdoses. She's cut open bodies in every state of decay and documented injuries ranging from minor to catastrophic.

But there's something about describing the injuries of a teenager that never gets routine. There's something about the clinical language of pathology that makes the violence of what happened impossible to hide. You can talk about contusions and lacerations and hemorrhaging. You can use Latin terms and medical jargon. But at the end of the day, you're describing what happened to a child.

This is what a 90 mile per hour impact does to a human body.

Day 3 of the trial of A.J. Scott was the day the jury had to sit with that reality. They heard from doctors who treated the survivors. They heard from the scientist who tested for alcohol in the blood. They heard from the woman who cut open two teenage girls and documented exactly how they died.

And then they heard from the defense's accident reconstruction expert, who spent hours explaining why none of this was really A.J. Scott's fault.

This was the day the prosecution rested. This was the day the defense began building its case. And this was the day a judge had to decide whether the evidence was even strong enough to let a jury decide if driving 90 miles per hour through an intersection without lights or sirens constitutes reckless driving.

The answer was yes. But the battle over what that means has only begun.

The morning started with Trooper Brandon Stone back on the stand. He'd testified the day before about the accident reconstruction, about the physics of the crash, about the data downloaded from Scott's patrol car showing he was traveling at 91 miles per hour five seconds before impact. Now it was defense attorney Mac Pilgrim's turn to pick that apart.

Pilgrim is a veteran defense attorney. He knows exactly what he's doing. And what he was doing on Day 3 was methodical. Patient. Devastating in its implications, if you believed it.

His cross-examination of Trooper Stone lasted hours. It was technical. It was mathematical. It involved calculations written on an easel with markers, physics equations, and arguments about friction coefficients that would make most people's eyes glaze over.

But underneath all those numbers was a simple argument: A.J. Scott wasn't reckless. He was just unlucky.

Stone had testified on direct examination that Scott was traveling at approximately 90 miles per hour at the time of impact, based on the data from the patrol car's event data recorder. Pilgrim didn't really dispute that number. What he disputed was what it meant.

The first thing Pilgrim established was something everyone in that courtroom already knew, but he wanted to make absolutely sure the jury understood it: in a left-hand turn situation with no traffic control device, the duty to yield falls on the vehicle making the turn.

Trooper Stone confirmed it. Yes, the driver turning left has to yield. Yes, the through traffic has the right of way. Yes, in this case, that means Dillon Wall had the legal obligation to yield to A.J. Scott's patrol car.

This is technically correct. Under Georgia traffic law, Section 40-6-71, a vehicle turning left must yield to vehicles approaching from the opposite direction that are close enough to constitute an immediate hazard.

But here's what that argument leaves out: Dillon Wall was turning at 22 miles per hour. A.J. Scott was approaching at 90 miles per hour. At night. In the rain. With no emergency lights or sirens activated.

How do you yield to something you can't see coming? How do you judge whether an oncoming vehicle is "close enough to constitute an immediate hazard" when that vehicle is traveling at nearly twice the speed limit?

Think about what yielding actually requires. You're sitting at an intersection, ready to turn left. You look down the road and see headlights approaching. You have to judge: how far away is that car? How fast is it going? Do I have time to complete my turn before it gets here?

We do this calculation every day without thinking about it. We look at the headlights, we estimate the speed based on how quickly they're getting closer, and we decide whether to go or wait.

But that calculation assumes the other driver is obeying the law. It assumes the approaching vehicle is doing roughly the speed limit. If a car is 500 feet away and traveling at 55 mph, you have about 6 seconds before it reaches the intersection. Plenty of time to complete a turn.

If that same car is traveling at 90 mph, you have less than 4 seconds. And the headlights don't look that different at first glance. You can't tell from a distance that a car is going 90 instead of 55. By the time you realize something is wrong, it's too late.

The duty to yield assumes normal traffic conditions. It assumes drivers can make reasonable judgments about the speed and distance of oncoming vehicles. It doesn't account for a trooper running dark at 90 miles per hour.

Pilgrim knew all of this, of course. He's not stupid. But his job wasn't to present a complete picture. His job was to create reasonable doubt. And reasonable doubt doesn't require truth. It just requires questions.

Pilgrim then got into the weeds on what he called the "recognition point," the moment when Scott first realized there was a car turning in front of him.

Trooper Stone had identified this as occurring at 1.9 seconds before impact, based on the steering data from Scott's patrol car. At that moment, the data showed Scott began steering to the right.

Pilgrim challenged this. He walked Stone through the data second by second, pointing to the throttle position, the engine RPMs, the accelerator percentage. Look here, he said. At 1.8 seconds, the accelerator goes to zero. At 1.8 seconds, the throttle drops. Doesn't that suggest recognition actually happened at 1.8 seconds, not 1.9?

Stone stuck with his assessment. He explained that he used the steering change as the recognition point because that's typically the first reaction a driver has to a threat coming from the side. Your hands are already on the wheel. The instinct is to turn away before your foot even moves to the brake.

It's a reasonable explanation. But Pilgrim had planted the seed. Maybe the analysis was off by a tenth of a second. Maybe Scott reacted faster than the prosecution claimed. Maybe he did everything right and still couldn't prevent this tragedy.

A tenth of a second doesn't sound like much. But at 90 miles per hour, you cover about 13 feet in a tenth of a second. In accident reconstruction, these small numbers matter.

Then came the math.

Pilgrim walked Stone through the standard formula for calculating speed from skid marks. It involves distance, friction coefficient, and gravity. The friction coefficient is the tricky part. It's different for dry pavement than for wet pavement. On a dry road, tires grip better. On a wet road, they slip more easily.

The night of the crash, it was raining.

Stone had used a range of friction coefficients in his calculations because he didn't know exactly how wet the road was. The standard values are around .80 for dry pavement and .45 for standing water. Pilgrim asked Stone to calculate what would happen if you split the difference. Call it .625.

Stone did the math on the easel. At that friction coefficient, with a 156-foot skid distance, the calculated speed would be approximately 54 miles per hour.

Pilgrim pounced. So if we assume the road was somewhere between wet and dry, not soaking but not bone dry either, then at 54 miles per hour, Scott would have been able to stop before the collision. He was going 55. One mile per hour over that threshold.

Stone agreed that the math worked out that way. But he also pointed out that this was all hypothetical. The actual friction coefficient on that road at that time was unknown. You can't just pick a number in the middle and call it accurate.

The prosecutor jumped in on redirect to clarify. Yes, it's speculation. Yes, the actual conditions are unknown. But the data from Scott's own patrol car showed he was going 91 miles per hour five seconds before impact. That's not speculation. That's his own vehicle telling us how fast he was going.

The math was interesting. But it was also a distraction. Because the fundamental question isn't whether Scott could have stopped at 54 miles per hour. The question is why he was going 90 miles per hour in the first place.

Pilgrim circled back to the duty to yield. He wanted Stone to confirm it one more time. The through traffic on Highway 27 northbound had the right of way. There was no traffic control device. The vehicle making the left turn had the obligation to yield.

Stone confirmed it all. Yes, Scott had the right of way. No, there was no legal obligation for Scott to yield or slow down for cross traffic.

Technically true. But the question isn't really about who had the right of way. The question is whether Scott was driving recklessly. Having the right of way doesn't mean you can drive however you want. Having the right of way doesn't excuse going 90 in a 55 zone with no emergency lights, no sirens, and no call to respond to.

Pilgrim knows the jury might be thinking about this. So he tried to address it in his cross-examination by focusing on what happened in the seconds before impact. Watch the video, he suggested. Look at how Scott reacted. Look at how quickly he tried to avoid the collision.

Pilgrim asked Stone about emergency vehicle operator training. When you teach officers to drive in emergency situations, what do you tell them to do when confronted with a surprise on the roadway?

Avoid it, Stone said. More specifically, steer where the threat came from. If a vehicle is approaching from your left going to your right, you steer behind it. You go left, not right.

Scott went right.

This is significant. Scott is a trained law enforcement officer. He went through emergency vehicle operator training. He knew the doctrine: steer toward where the threat came from, not away from it. But in the fraction of a second he had to react, his instinct was to swerve right, away from the threat.

The prosecutor picked up on this on redirect. Stone acknowledged that if Scott had stayed in the left lane, the Nissan would have cleared. The collision occurred because Scott swerved right, into the path the Nissan was traveling.

It's a moment that cuts both ways. On one hand, it suggests Scott made the wrong choice in the split second he had. On the other hand, it's hard to second-guess someone's instinctive reaction in a life-or-death situation. Pilgrim emphasized that point: hard to put into practice when you're actually behind the wheel.

But then came a critical admission. The prosecutor asked Stone directly: if Scott had stayed in the left lane, would there have been a collision?

Stone's answer: it appears that way from the video. The Nissan cleared that left lane before Scott's patrol car arrived at the intersection.

Pilgrim immediately jumped back in. He flipped the question. If the Nissan hadn't been there at all, would there have been a collision? No. If the Nissan had stopped before entering the intersection? No. If the Nissan had stopped after its nose entered the first lane? Maybe not.

Stone agreed with all of it. Every hypothetical was true. If the Nissan had done something different, the crash might not have happened.

But the same is true for Scott. If he hadn't been going 90. If he'd had his lights and sirens on. If he'd been responding to an actual call. If he'd steered left instead of right.

Two cars. Two drivers. Two sets of decisions. But only one of them was a trained law enforcement officer driving nearly twice the speed limit on a rainy night without any emergency justification.

That's what makes this case different. That's what makes it a criminal case rather than just a tragic accident.

After Trooper Stone was excused, the prosecution called Dr. Matthew Wheatley to the stand. Dr. Wheatley is an emergency physician at Grady Hospital in Atlanta. He's been doing this for 20 years. He's a professor of emergency medicine at Emory. And on the morning of September 27, 2015, he was working in the trauma center when Benjamin Finken arrived.

Finken was one of the four teenagers in the Nissan. He was a passenger. When he arrived at Grady, he was intubated. He had a breathing tube in. He'd been stabilized at another hospital and transferred to Grady's level one trauma center.

Dr. Wheatley explained what that meant. A level one trauma center has specialists available around the clock. Neurosurgeons. Hand surgeons. The full range of services needed to handle the most severe injuries. Finken needed all of it.

The CT scan showed bleeding inside his skull. Specifically, what Dr. Wheatley described as "questionable tiny punctate intracranial hematoma" in the right temporal lobe, with surrounding swelling. There was also possible subdural bleeding and some irregularities in the cervical spine.

In plain English: Benjamin Finken had bleeding in his brain, swelling around it, and potential damage to his neck.

He was sent to the ICU because that's where you put patients on ventilators, patients who might not survive without constant monitoring.

Pilgrim's cross-examination of Dr. Wheatley was brief but pointed. He focused on the effects of traumatic brain injury on behavior and memory.

Can a collision trigger fight-or-flight response? Yes. What does that mean? It means your sympathetic nervous system takes over. You might try to run away. You might resist being restrained on a backboard. You're not thinking clearly.

This was laying groundwork for the defense's argument about Dillon Wall, the driver. Wall was also injured, also suffering from TBI. He was reportedly combative at the scene. The defense wanted the jury to understand that this wasn't suspicious behavior. It was a medical symptom.

But there's another implication here that Pilgrim didn't address: if Finken and Wall both had traumatic brain injuries that affected their behavior and memory, then their statements after the crash might be unreliable. Their recollections might be incomplete or inaccurate.

This cuts against the defense's reliance on blaming Wall. If Wall was so brain-injured that he was fighting responders, how much weight can we put on analyzing his decision-making in the seconds before the crash?

The next witness was Dr. Dave Cook, a retired clinical chemist who directed the clinical chemistry laboratory at Grady Hospital for 20 years. His expertise is in blood testing. What substances are in the blood, how much, and what it means.

Dr. Cook's testimony was about alcohol.

The defense has made much of the fact that there were beer bottles in the teenagers' car. Broken Budweiser bottles. The smell of alcohol at the scene. The implication is obvious: the teenagers were drinking, their judgment was impaired, and Wall's decision to turn in front of Scott's patrol car was the result of that impairment.

But the Georgia State Patrol's Nighthawks DUI Task Force investigated this at the time. They found insufficient evidence to charge Wall with DUI. And the blood tests tell us why.

Dr. Cook walked the jury through the lab results. The value for ethanol in Wall's blood was recorded as "less than 10 milligrams per deciliter."

That might sound like there was some alcohol present. But Dr. Cook explained what that number actually means. It's the limit of detection for their testing equipment. If the alcohol level is below 10, the machine can't give you a specific number. It just says "less than 10."

For DUI purposes, the legal limit in Georgia is 0.08 grams per deciliter. That's equivalent to 80 milligrams per deciliter. Wall's blood showed less than 10.

If you move the decimal point like you do for DUI calculations, that's less than 0.01. One hundredth of a percent. Essentially nothing.

The prosecutor drove this point home. Less than 10 means the hospital essentially couldn't detect any alcohol. It could be zero. It could be two. It could be nine. But whatever it was, it was below the threshold where the equipment could measure it.

For all practical purposes, Dillon Wall was not intoxicated.

This matters more than almost anything else in the defense's case. If you strip away all the technical arguments about friction coefficients and recognition points and line of sight, the defense's core narrative is this: the teenagers were drinking, their judgment was impaired, and that's why Wall turned in front of Scott's patrol car.

The blood evidence destroys that narrative.

Pilgrim tried to push back on this during cross-examination. He asked about alcohol metabolism. The human body breaks down alcohol over time. Wall's blood was drawn at 1:15 a.m., approximately an hour and 45 minutes after the crash. Couldn't he have had more alcohol in his system at the time of the accident that metabolized by the time his blood was drawn?

Dr. Cook acknowledged that alcohol does metabolize. But he also noted that he's not a toxicologist and couldn't give specific rates. He deferred to the testimony of Dr. Wheatley, who had earlier mentioned metabolism rates of 15 to 25 milligrams per deciliter per hour.

Let's do that math. If Wall's blood alcohol was less than 10 at 1:15 a.m., and alcohol metabolizes at 15-25 mg/dL per hour, then at most his blood alcohol at the time of the crash (around 11:36 p.m.) would have been around 25-45 mg/dL. That's still well below the legal limit of 80 mg/dL.

Even with the most generous assumptions about metabolism, Wall wasn't legally impaired.

The beer bottles in the car don't tell the story the defense wants them to tell. The blood evidence shows Wall was not legally impaired. The DUI task force found no probable cause to charge him. The teenagers may have had alcohol in the car, but the driver wasn't drunk.

Pilgrim also tried to create doubt about the testing methodology. He asked whether the hospital's clinical chemistry tests were the same as forensic tests used for DUI cases. Dr. Cook acknowledged they're different. Hospital tests use enzymatic assays on serum. Forensic tests use gas chromatography on whole blood.

But here's the thing: serum tests actually tend to read higher than whole blood tests, not lower. If anything, Wall's alcohol level would have been even lower on a forensic test.

The alcohol argument is a red herring. The evidence doesn't support it. But the defense knows that jurors might remember those beer bottles. They might remember the smell at the scene. Reasonable doubt doesn't require proof. It just requires questions.

And then came Dr. Lora Darrisaw.

Dr. Darrisaw is a forensic pathologist with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. She's been there since 2001. She has performed over 7,800 autopsies. Her job is to cut open the dead and determine how they died.

On September 28, 2015, in the early hours of Monday morning, she performed the autopsies on both Kylie Lindsey and Isabella Chinchilla.

The prosecutor's direct examination was methodical. Dr. Darrisaw walked through the photographs first. The body bags. The tags with the case numbers. The standard documentation that the GBI uses to receive and process the deceased.

There's something almost clinical about this part of the testimony. Case numbers. Body bags. Seals and tags. The bureaucracy of death. But for the families sitting in that courtroom, these weren't case numbers. These were their daughters. Their best friends. Their children who left the house on a Saturday night and never came home.

Then she described what she found inside.

Isabella Chinchilla, 16 years old. Multiple blunt impact injuries consistent with a motor vehicle collision. Abrasions and contusions on the scalp and face. Blood on the surface of the brain. Brain swelling.

And then the injury that killed her: a complete laceration of the aorta. The aorta is the major blood vessel that comes directly from the heart and supplies blood to the entire body. Isabella's was torn completely through.

She also had lacerations of the liver. Blood in her left chest cavity and abdomen. A pelvic fracture.

The cause of death: blunt impact injuries of the head and torso.

The manner of death: accident.

Dr. Darrisaw explained what that means in medical examiner terms. There are five options for manner of death: natural, accident, homicide, suicide, or undetermined. Accident means the death wasn't intentional. Nobody set out to kill Isabella Chinchilla.

This is different from the legal definition of criminal responsibility. A.J. Scott isn't charged with intentionally killing anyone. He's charged with vehicular homicide, which means causing death through criminal negligence or reckless conduct while operating a vehicle. The medical examiner's finding of "accident" doesn't mean Scott isn't criminally responsible. It just means he didn't murder anyone.

Kylie Lindsey's autopsy told a similar story. Soft tissue damage in the chest. Multiple regions of bleeding. Bruises and lacerations throughout her body. No skull fractures, but significant internal trauma.

Her cause of death was also blunt impact injuries of the torso.

Both girls essentially bled to death from internal injuries caused by the force of the collision.

This is what happens when a car traveling at 90 miles per hour strikes another vehicle. The forces involved are catastrophic. Human bodies aren't designed to withstand that kind of impact.

Pilgrim's cross-examination of Dr. Darrisaw focused on a strange detail: a circular mark on Kylie Lindsey's body, beneath her left breast.

The defense had introduced a photograph of an airbag from the Nissan. They wanted Dr. Darrisaw to look at the pattern on that airbag and compare it to the mark on Kylie's body.

Dr. Darrisaw noted that the mark had an unusual pattern. An inner ring, an outer ring, with sparing in the middle. It looked like a circle imprinted on the skin.

Could this mark have been caused by impact with the airbag? Dr. Darrisaw said it was possible. The patterns were similar. If there was significant impact, an airbag could potentially cause such a mark.

But she also said she'd never seen an airbag cause this kind of injury before. In her experience, airbags cause confluent contusions, meaning bruises that are uniform and solid, not ring-shaped with clear centers. Airbags can also cause broken noses, facial trauma, and leave particles on the skin. She hadn't seen this circular pattern from an airbag before.

This is part of the defense's theory about where Kylie was positioned in the vehicle. If she was struck by an airbag, she might have been in the front seat rather than the back. That matters because of a theory developed during the original investigation: that Kylie might have been positioned in a way that blocked the driver's view of the oncoming patrol car.

The prosecutor pushed back on redirect. If an airbag typically hits a driver in the face and neck area, and this mark is on Kylie's lower torso, doesn't that mean she would have had to be elevated above where a normal driver sits?

Dr. Darrisaw couldn't say for certain. It was possible. But without more information about exactly how the collision occurred and how bodies moved during the impact, she couldn't draw firm conclusions.

After the lunch break, the defense called its first witness.

Will Parton walked into the courtroom with a limp. He'd broken his toe two days earlier, kicking a bed post. He mentioned it almost sheepishly as he introduced himself. It was the most human moment in a day otherwise filled with clinical testimony and technical analysis.

Parton is an accident reconstructionist. He spent five years as a crash investigator with the DeKalb County Police Department before moving to the private sector in 1999. He's now been doing this for about 30 years. He's accredited by ACTAR, the Accreditation Commission for Traffic Accident Reconstruction. He's taught classes at the Georgia Public Safety Training Center. He's testified in 11 states, the District of Columbia, and federal court.

The defense hired him to analyze the crash and offer his expert opinion.

Parton's core contribution was refining the friction coefficient calculation. Remember Trooper Stone's testimony about using a range of values because he didn't know exactly how wet the road was? Parton had a different approach.

He used the data from Scott's patrol car. The event data recorder showed Scott's speed at different points: 83 mph at one timestamp, 66 mph at another, with 1.5 seconds between them. From those numbers, Parton calculated what the actual friction coefficient must have been for the car to decelerate at that rate.

His answer: 0.51g.

This is lower than the dry road value of 0.80 but higher than the standing water value of 0.45. It suggests the road was wet but not soaked. And importantly, it's a calculated value based on actual vehicle performance, not an estimate based on road conditions.

Using this coefficient, Parton created a diagram showing what would have happened if Scott had been traveling at the 55 mph speed limit.

At 55 mph, Parton calculated, Scott would have needed 2.9 seconds and 165 feet to stop. The Nissan was traveling at 22 mph and needed 2.35 seconds to clear the intersection.

The timing was close. Very close. At 55 mph, Scott might have been able to stop in time. Or he might have hit the Nissan anyway, just at a lower speed.

Parton's diagram also showed what would happen if Scott had started braking three-tenths of a second earlier. In that scenario, the patrol car would have traveled 9 feet less before the collision point. The Nissan, at its constant 22 mph, would have been about 9 feet further along. Given that the collision involved the rear of the Nissan, that 9 feet might have been enough for the vehicles to miss each other.

The implication: if Scott had reacted slightly faster, if he'd recognized the danger a fraction of a second earlier, the crash might not have happened.

But here's what Parton's analysis doesn't address: why was Scott going 90 mph in the first place? All of these calculations about reaction time and stopping distance start from the assumption that Scott was traveling at his actual speed of 90 mph. If he'd been doing 55, the whole analysis changes dramatically. He would have had more time to react. He would have needed less distance to stop. The margin for error would have been much greater.

The prosecutor picked up on this during cross-examination. She asked Parton about line of sight. He'd included a diagram showing the sight distances available to both vehicles as they approached the intersection.

And that's when Parton made a crucial admission: line of sight works two ways.

If Scott could see the intersection from a certain distance, then Wall could also see the oncoming patrol car from a corresponding distance. The prosecution's argument has focused on Scott's reckless speed. But the same analysis applies to Wall's decision to turn.

Parton acknowledged this. At 269 feet back, the patrol car would have been visible to anyone looking. But at that distance, traveling at 90 mph in the dark, how fast does that car appear to be approaching? Can you accurately judge the speed of headlights from that far away?

The prosecutor pressed harder. If the Nissan hadn't been there, would there have been a collision? No. If the Nissan had stopped before entering the intersection? No. If the Nissan had stopped after its nose entered the first lane? Maybe not.

Parton agreed. Every hypothetical about the Nissan doing something different was true.

But then the prosecutor flipped it. If the patrol car had been going the speed limit of 55 mph, would the Nissan have cleared the intersection? Parton's own diagram suggested it was very close. And if Scott had his emergency lights on, would Wall have been more likely to stop or wait? Almost certainly.

Two cars. Two drivers. A thousand different ways this could have gone. But at the end of the day, one driver was a trained law enforcement officer traveling at 90 mph without lights or sirens, and the other was an eighteen-year-old kid trying to make a left turn on a rainy night.

Parton's final point was significant: this isn't a single-car accident. Two drivers made decisions that led to this collision. Both bear some responsibility.

But only one of them is on trial. And the reason for that matters.

After the jury left for the weekend, the real legal battle began.

Mac Pilgrim stood up and made a motion for directed verdict. He was asking the judge to throw out the reckless driving charge, and with it, the vehicular homicide charges that depend on that recklessness.

A directed verdict is a powerful tool. It means the judge takes the case away from the jury because the evidence is so clearly insufficient that no reasonable jury could convict. It's not common, but it's not rare either. Judges grant directed verdicts when prosecutors simply haven't proven their case.

His argument was straightforward: speeding alone is not reckless driving under Georgia law.

He cited case law. Worley v. State, where a defendant who drove into a ditch trying to evade what he thought were attackers was found not guilty of reckless driving. Prather v. State, where driving 15-20 mph over the limit, weaving through traffic in the rain, and having a blood alcohol of 0.135 before crossing the median and killing someone was found to be reckless driving. Travis v. State, where driving 32 mph over the limit in a construction zone after admitting to consuming alcohol was found to constitute reckless driving.

The distinction Pilgrim was trying to draw: reckless driving requires something more than just speed. It requires a pattern of dangerous behavior. Weaving. Running off the road. Hitting fixed objects. Disregarding basic traffic rules beyond just the speed limit.

Scott, he argued, maintained his lane throughout. He met 10 to 12 other vehicles traveling southbound on Highway 27 without incident. He didn't strike any of them. He didn't run off the road. He encountered vehicles near the red light at the Battle Junction Store without incident. The only collision occurred when someone turned in front of him.

Speed alone, Pilgrim argued, is not enough. If the legislature wanted speed to equal reckless driving, they would have said so explicitly. They didn't.

It's a clever argument. And it has some legal support. Georgia courts have been reluctant to equate speeding with recklessness in every case. There has to be something more.

But what Pilgrim's argument ignores is context. This wasn't just speeding. This was a law enforcement officer, in a marked patrol car, traveling at nearly twice the speed limit, at night, in the rain, without emergency lights, without sirens, and without any emergency call to respond to.

The prosecutor's response was equally straightforward: there's a point at which speed becomes so excessive that it is, by itself, reckless.

She cited Craze v. State, which held that speeding unaccompanied by other traffic violations can form the basis for reckless driving if the state presents evidence that the defendant was driving at an excessive rate of speed given the posted limit and traffic conditions.

Almost twice the speed limit. Coming up a hill. Approaching an intersection. At night. In the rain. Reduced visibility. No emergency lights. No sirens. No emergency call.

That's not just speeding. That's reckless disregard for the safety of persons or property.

Judge Sandra Poole took less than a minute to rule.

A directed verdict is appropriate only when there is no conflict in the evidence and the evidence demands a particular verdict. That's not the case here. The motion is denied.

The jury will decide whether A.J. Scott was reckless.

This is the right decision. Whether 90 mph in a 55 zone constitutes recklessness is exactly the kind of question juries exist to answer. It's a judgment call about community standards of reasonable behavior. It's not a legal technicality for a judge to decide.

But the denial of the directed verdict also means the case could have gone either way in the judge's view. She wasn't saying the prosecution had proven recklessness. She was saying they'd presented enough evidence for a reasonable jury to find it.

That's the bar for getting to a jury. It's not a high bar. It just means the evidence isn't laughably insufficient.

The real question remains open: is driving 90 mph through an intersection, at night, in the rain, with no emergency justification, reckless? Or is it just speeding?

What the Jury Saw

By the end of Day 3, the jury had been bombarded with information. Technical analysis of friction coefficients and recognition points. Medical testimony about traumatic brain injuries and blood alcohol levels. Autopsy reports describing exactly how two teenage girls died.

But underneath all that complexity, the jury saw something simpler.

They saw a medical examiner describe cutting open Isabella Chinchilla and finding her aorta completely severed. They heard about blood pooling in body cavities, organs lacerated, bones fractured. They understood, in the most visceral way possible, what 90 mph means when steel meets steel.

They also saw a defense attorney spend hours trying to shift blame to an eighteen-year-old kid who made a left turn. They saw diagrams and calculations designed to suggest that the real problem wasn't the trooper going twice the speed limit. The real problem was the teenager who didn't yield.

The jury has to decide how they feel about that.

On one level, Pilgrim's argument makes sense. Dillon Wall did turn in front of Scott's patrol car. If he hadn't, there would have been no collision. That's just physics.

But on another level, there's something deeply troubling about blaming the teenagers for their own deaths. They were kids. Four friends in a car on a Saturday night. They weren't doing anything unusual or dangerous. They were just trying to make a left turn.

A.J. Scott was a trained law enforcement officer. He knew the risks of high-speed driving. He knew the rules about emergency lights and sirens. He chose to go 90 mph without any emergency justification. And when someone turned in front of him, he didn't have enough time or distance to stop.

The duty to yield is a legal concept. It tells us who has the right of way at an intersection. But it doesn't tell us who bears moral responsibility when things go wrong. It doesn't tell us who should face criminal charges when two teenagers end up on an autopsy table.

The jury will have to grapple with all of this. The technical evidence. The emotional weight. The fundamental question of whether the badge provides protection or imposes obligation.

Why This Matters

My father used to say that the law is just words on paper until someone forces the system to follow it. The Constitution means nothing if prosecutors ignore it. Due process is empty if judges don't enforce it. The presumption of innocence is worthless if juries forget it.

He learned this the hard way. Twice the system came for him. Once for refusing to violate attorney-client privilege. Once for helping people understand their rights from a coffee shop. Both times, the system showed him that its pretty words about equal justice don't always translate into equal treatment.

This case tests something fundamental about how we apply the law. When a state trooper kills two teenagers, do we hold him to the same standard as anyone else? Or does the badge provide a layer of protection that ordinary citizens don't receive?

The first grand jury didn't indict. The second grand jury only indicted on misdemeanors. The felony charges were dismissed on procedural grounds and had to be reinstated through the Georgia Supreme Court. The first trial ended in a mistrial over discovery violations. The case has dragged on for nearly a decade.

If this were an ordinary citizen who killed two teenagers while driving 90 mph, would we be in year ten? Would there have been three grand juries? Would the defendant have been elected mayor while awaiting trial?

I think we all know the answer to that question. And that's what makes this case so important to watch.

The families of Kylie Lindsey and Isabella Chinchilla have spent nearly ten years fighting for something the system should have provided automatically: accountability. They've watched the man who killed their daughters run for office and win. They've sat through legal proceedings that seemed designed to delay rather than deliver justice. They've heard arguments that their daughters were somehow responsible for their own deaths.

Whatever you think about the evidence in this case, whatever you believe about duty to yield and friction coefficients and recognition points, consider this: would any of this be happening if A.J. Scott weren't a former trooper?

These questions matter because they go to the heart of equal justice under law. Either the rules apply to everyone or they don't. Either law enforcement officers are held accountable when they violate the law, or they're not.

A.J. Scott is presumed innocent. That's not a formality. It's the foundation of our system. The prosecution has to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. If they fail, Scott walks free, and that's how it should be.

But the jury should also consider what message their verdict sends. If you can drive 90 mph through an intersection, kill two teenagers, and escape criminal liability because the other driver failed to yield, what does that say about our system? What does it say about accountability?

The defense wants the jury to focus on Dillon Wall's decision to turn. The prosecution wants the jury to focus on Scott's decision to drive 90 mph without emergency justification.

Both decisions matter. But only one of them involved a trained professional violating the rules he swore to uphold.

The Bigger Picture

Day 3 marked a transition in the trial. The prosecution rested its case. The defense began presenting its theory.

Over the first three days, the prosecution built its case around the facts of the crash. The speed data from Scott's patrol car. The dashcam video showing the collision. The body camera footage capturing Scott's statements at the scene. The medical evidence documenting the injuries and deaths.

The defense's strategy became clear on Day 3: shift the focus to the Nissan. Emphasize the duty to yield. Raise questions about alcohol in the vehicle. Suggest that Kylie might have been positioned in a way that blocked the driver's view. Frame this as a tragic accident caused by a teenager's failure to yield, not a crime caused by a trooper's recklessness.

Both narratives have elements of truth. Wall did turn in front of Scott's patrol car. Scott was going 90 mph without emergency justification.

But the law doesn't ask who was more wrong. It asks whether Scott's conduct was criminal. Specifically, whether he operated his vehicle with reckless disregard for the safety of persons or property.

The judge's denial of the directed verdict means the jury will have to answer that question. And their answer will matter far beyond this case.

If Scott is convicted, it sends a message that law enforcement officers are not above the law. That the badge doesn't provide immunity. That killing people while violating the rules carries consequences.

If Scott is acquitted, it sends a different message. That juries are willing to accept the "failed to yield" defense even when the defendant was traveling at nearly twice the speed limit. That speed alone isn't reckless. That officers have more latitude to violate traffic laws than ordinary citizens.

Neither outcome changes what happened on September 26, 2015. Kylie Lindsey and Isabella Chinchilla are still dead. Their families have still spent nearly a decade fighting for accountability. Nothing the jury decides will bring them back.

But the verdict will shape how we understand accountability in cases like this. It will influence how prosecutors approach law enforcement misconduct. It will affect how future juries think about similar cases.

That's the weight of what happens in that courtroom. Every decision matters. Every piece of evidence tells a story. And ultimately, twelve people have to decide what that story means.

What to Watch For

As the trial continues, here's what I'll be paying attention to:

The defense will likely call more witnesses to support its theory about the collision. We've heard from their accident reconstruction expert. Will they call witnesses about the teenagers' activities that night? Will they try to reinforce the alcohol narrative despite the blood evidence? Will they bring in character witnesses for Scott?

The prosecution will get a chance for rebuttal. If the defense overreaches in blaming the victims, the state can push back. They can remind the jury that Dillon Wall wasn't legally impaired, that the beer bottles don't change the blood test results. They can bring the focus back to Scott's conduct: the speed, the lack of emergency justification, the decision to run dark.

Closing arguments will be crucial. This case ultimately comes down to how the jury frames the question. Is this about a teenager who failed to yield? Or is this about a trooper who drove 90 mph without justification? The side that controls the framing will likely control the verdict.

The judge's jury instructions will also matter. How she defines "reckless driving" for the jury could tip the balance. Does she emphasize that speed alone can constitute recklessness in extreme circumstances? Or does she frame it as requiring something more? The exact language of those instructions could be the difference between conviction and acquittal.

Watch the defendant. A.J. Scott has sat through three days of testimony about the crash that killed Kylie and Isabella. He's heard the medical examiner describe their injuries. He's seen the photos. He's listened to expert after expert analyze his conduct. How does he react? Does he show remorse? Does he maintain composure? Juries notice these things even when they're not supposed to.

And finally, we'll see how the families hold up. They've been through three grand juries, one mistrial, and nearly a decade of delays. They've watched the man who killed their daughters get elected mayor. They've sat through testimony describing exactly how their children died.

Whatever verdict comes, they deserve an answer. After ten years, they deserve to know whether the system they trusted will hold someone accountable.

That's what we're watching for.