Georgia v. A.J. Scott

He raised his right hand. He swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth.

And then Anthony James Scott, the former Georgia State Patrol trooper who killed two teenage girls while driving 90 miles per hour to pick up a radio, sat down in the witness chair and looked at the jury.

Nearly ten years. That's how long the families of Kylie Lindsey and Isabella Chinchilla have waited for this moment. Ten years of grand juries. Ten years of mistrials. Ten years of watching the man who killed their daughters get elected to city council, then mayor. Ten years of wondering if the system would ever hold one of its own accountable.

And now, finally, he had to answer for it.

I want you to understand the weight of what happened in that courtroom today. This isn't just another defendant taking the stand. This is the conclusion of a decade-long fight for accountability. The families who lost their daughters on September 26, 2015, have spent nearly a third of their remaining lives waiting for this trial. Every holiday since then has been missing two seats at the table. Every graduation ceremony has been watched with the knowledge of who should have been walking across that stage. Every birthday has been a reminder of a future that was taken away.

Kylie Lindsey was seventeen years old. Isabella Chinchilla was sixteen. They were best friends. They had plans. They had futures. And then a Georgia State Patrol trooper driving to pick up a radio decided the speed limit didn't apply to him.

That's not editorializing. That's what the evidence shows. That's what Scott himself admitted today on the stand. He wasn't responding to an emergency. He wasn't pursuing a suspect. He wasn't using his lights or sirens. He was just driving to Bremen to get a radio he'd left charging with another officer. And he was doing 90 miles per hour while he did it.

Not to the prosecutors who built this case. Not to the media that covered every delay. To the twelve people who will decide whether what he did that night was a crime or just a tragedy.

I've covered a lot of trials. I've watched a lot of defendants take the stand. Some of them shouldn't have. Some of them had to. But I've rarely seen a moment with this much weight, this much history, this much at stake for everyone in the room.

The families of the girls he killed sat in the gallery. The survivors of that crash, Dillon Wall and Benjamin Finken, had already testified about what they remember and what they'll never get back. Now the man who changed all their lives forever had to explain why.

Why was he driving 90 miles per hour? Why weren't his lights on? Why wasn't he responding to a call? Why did two seventeen-year-old best friends have to die?

His answer, when it came, was almost painfully mundane.

A dead radio battery. That's it. He'd left his body-worn radio with a Bremen police officer to charge, and he was driving back to get it. No emergency. No pursuit. No dispatch. Just a trooper who wanted his radio back and decided the speed limit didn't apply to him.

I've sat through a lot of trials. I've heard a lot of explanations for why people did terrible things. Drug addiction. Domestic violence. Financial desperation. Mental illness. Sometimes the explanations are sympathetic. Sometimes they're horrifying. But I've rarely heard an explanation as banal as this one.

A radio. Two teenage girls are dead because a trooper wanted his radio.

Not because he was drunk. His blood test came back negative. Not because he was on drugs. That test was negative too. Not because he was racing to save someone's life. There was no emergency call. Not because he was in pursuit of a dangerous criminal. The chase had been called off.

Just a radio. A piece of equipment that needed to be charged. An errand that could have waited until his shift was over, or until morning, or until any time that didn't require driving 90 miles per hour through an intersection with limited visibility at nearly midnight.

The defense will tell you this was an accident. The other driver failed to yield. The grass in the median was three feet high and blocked the view. The teenagers had alcohol in the car. All of that may be true. But none of it changes the fundamental question: why was he driving 90 miles per hour to pick up a radio?

Before we get to Scott's testimony, though, we need to talk about everything that led up to it. Because Day 4 wasn't just about the defendant. It was about cleaning up the narrative, presenting the last pieces of evidence, and setting the stage for closing arguments.

And it started with a video that the defense wanted the jury to see in a different light. Literally.

The morning began with Owen Garrett, a multimedia forensics expert who works at his father's company, Garrett Discovery Incorporated. He was the defense's witness, called to enhance the dashcam footage that's been at the center of this trial.

The original video is dark. It was recorded at night, on a rainy evening, through a dashcam that was never designed to capture the split-second decisions that lead to fatal crashes. Garrett's job was to brighten it, to adjust the contrast, to make it more viewable for the jury.

He was careful to explain what he didn't do. He didn't add anything. He didn't remove anything. He used a program called AMPED FIVE, an industry-standard forensic video tool, to run what he called a "smart adjust filter" that automatically brightens and adds contrast to make the image more viewable.

"Non-destructive," he called it. The underlying data stays the same. You're just pulling more information out of what's already there.

The defense entered two versions of the enhanced video. Defense Exhibit 22 was the enhanced video at normal speed. Defense Exhibit 23 was the same video slowed down. And then the jury watched both.

There's something uniquely terrible about watching a fatal crash in slow motion. You see the headlights of the Nissan. You see them moving into the intersection. You see them getting closer and closer. And you know exactly what's coming, and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it.

The prosecution's cross-examination of Garrett was smart. They got him to acknowledge the limitations of what video enhancement can actually show. Yes, you can brighten a dark image. But you can't eliminate blur. You can't make a nighttime video as clear as a daytime one. You can't enhance away the distortion caused by rain on a camera lens or reflective surfaces catching headlights.

And most importantly, Garrett admitted he's not qualified to say what anyone is looking at in the video. He can enhance the image. He can't interpret it. That's for the jury to decide.

"We could watch the video multiple times and I could ask you, 'What do you think this is?' And you would just say, 'I don't know. That's what the video is,'" the prosecutor pressed. Garrett agreed.

It was a subtle but important point. The defense wants the jury to look at that enhanced video and see a car that appeared out of nowhere, that gave Scott no time to react. The prosecution wants the jury to remember that the video is just one piece of evidence, and that the physics of a 4,281-pound patrol car traveling 90 miles per hour don't change no matter how bright you make the image.

After Garrett was excused, the defense called Brian Blankenship.

Blankenship is a retired Georgia State Patrol sergeant. He spent 27 years with the agency, working his way up from radio operator to road trooper to corporal to sergeant first class. On the night of September 26, 2015, he was the NCO on call for Post 4, which covers Carroll and Douglas counties. He'd just gotten home from his shift when the phone calls started coming in.

Post 4 was the busiest post in the entire Georgia State Patrol for crash response. They averaged about 4,000 crashes a year. That's roughly 30 crashes a month per trooper. The men and women working that post saw more automotive carnage in a single year than most people see in a lifetime. They knew what speed did to human bodies. They knew what happened when physics met flesh.

Blankenship lived up in Polk County, near the Floyd County line, almost at Dug Down Mountain. That's a significant distance from the crash scene in Carroll County. But when you're the NCO on call, you respond. He got dressed, got in his car, and headed south.

Blankenship responded to the crash scene from his home in Polk County, near the Floyd County line. By the time he arrived, the scene was chaos. Multiple first responders. EMS. Other police. Isabella Chinchilla was still in the vehicle. The other three teenagers had been transported to hospitals.

He walked around both vehicles. The patrol car. The Nissan. And he saw something that would become a central piece of the defense's theory.

"There was alcohol bottles around, I guess it's a Nissan," Blankenship testified. "I don't remember the vehicle apparently, but yeah, there were strewn through the vehicle and out on the ground."

This is the defense's constant refrain: the teenagers had alcohol in the car. The driver might have been impaired. There might be another explanation for why that Nissan pulled into the path of Scott's patrol car.

But let's think about what Blankenship actually saw. Bottles. Not a breathalyzer result. Not a blood test. Bottles. Bottles that could have been empty before anyone got in that car. Bottles that could have belonged to someone else entirely. Bottles that, in the chaos of a high-speed collision, ended up scattered around a destroyed vehicle.

The presence of alcohol containers tells us almost nothing about whether the driver was impaired. It's suggestive, sure. It raises questions. But it's not proof of anything except that someone at some point had alcohol in that vehicle.

But Blankenship also testified to something the defense wanted the jury to hear. As the NCO on scene, he was in charge until the Specialized Collision Reconstruction Team arrived. And one of the things he did was order a blood draw from A.J. Scott.

Scott consented. No warrant needed. He voluntarily gave his blood at Tanner Medical Center at 2:11 in the morning. And when the results came back from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation crime lab, they showed exactly what you'd expect from a trooper who was on duty that night.

Negative for alcohol. Negative for drugs.

The defense's point is obvious: their client wasn't impaired. But the prosecution's counter is just as obvious: of course he wasn't impaired. He was on duty. In uniform. Driving a patrol car. The fact that he was sober doesn't excuse driving 90 miles per hour with no emergency to respond to.

The cross-examination of Blankenship focused on what he didn't find. He suspected alcohol might have been involved with the driver of the Nissan. He noticed the bottles. He requested that a trooper from the Nighthawks DUI Task Force in Atlanta go to Grady Memorial Hospital to investigate Dillon Wall.

But here's the thing: they never developed probable cause. Trooper Brandon Parker, the Nighthawks specialist, went to the hospital. He couldn't get close enough to detect alcohol on Wall's breath because Wall was hooked up to medical equipment and combative from his traumatic brain injury. No DUI test was administered. No charges were filed.

The crash reports that Blankenship filed said the same thing: Law enforcement suspected alcohol use? No. Law enforcement suspected drug use? No.

Those forms tell a story the defense doesn't love. Yes, there were alcohol bottles in the car. Yes, someone suspected the teenagers might have been drinking. But after investigation, there was no probable cause to charge anyone with DUI. The only person whose blood was tested came back clean, and that was the trooper who was driving 90 miles per hour.

After Blankenship came Joseph Clay Sims, an EMT who was working for West Georgia Ambulance that night. Sims had been an EMT for about five years at that point. He and his partner, paramedic Jessica Hulk, ran about 19 calls every 24-hour shift. They were the busiest ambulance in Carroll County.

Think about that for a moment. Nineteen calls in 24 hours. That's roughly one call every 75 minutes, with no time built in for eating, sleeping, or processing what you've just seen. These are the people we rely on when everything goes wrong, and we pay them almost nothing and work them until they break. But that's a different conversation for a different day.

When the call came in, Sims was leaving Tanner Carrollton Hospital. They responded to the scene, grabbed their equipment, and Sims's paramedic assigned him to help with the driver of the Nissan, Dillon Wall.

Wall was eighteen years old that night. He'd been behind the wheel when the collision happened. His injuries were severe. He would later be diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury that he's still dealing with nearly a decade later. He lost hearing in one ear. He has memory gaps that will never fill in. He was the driver, but he was also a victim.

They transported Wall to Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. The trip took about 45 minutes on a Saturday night. And during that trip, something happened that Sims remembered clearly almost ten years later.

Wall threw up.

"It smelled like birthday cake vodka," Sims testified. Asked if he was familiar with that smell, he said, "It's been around for sure."

Birthday cake vodka. If you're not familiar, it's exactly what it sounds like. A flavored vodka that tastes like birthday cake. Sweet. Distinctive. The kind of thing you remember smelling because it doesn't smell like regular alcohol.

The prosecution asked a practical question: was there any food in the vomit? Any particulate? Any evidence of the cupcakes and McDonald's that the teenagers said they'd eaten that night?

"It was all liquid," Sims said.

The defense loves this testimony. If Wall was vomiting birthday cake vodka with no food in it, that suggests he'd been drinking a lot more than the one sip of beer he remembered. If he was impaired, maybe he's the one who caused the crash by failing to yield.

But there's another explanation the prosecution can offer. Wall had a severe traumatic brain injury. He was combative and confused at the hospital. Vomiting is a common symptom of TBI. The brain swells, pressure increases, and the body responds with nausea and vomiting. It's one of the warning signs emergency responders are trained to look for.

And the smell? Well, that's one EMT's recollection from almost a decade ago. It's not a blood test. It's not a breathalyzer. It's a memory of what vomit smelled like during a chaotic ambulance ride in the middle of the night after one of the worst crashes Carroll County had seen that year.

Memory is unreliable. Smells are subjective. And the passage of time distorts everything. I'm not saying Sims is lying. I'm saying that testimony about what vomit smelled like ten years ago isn't the same as a blood alcohol reading taken that night.

The next witness brought us back to the physical evidence. Chad Barrow, the Specialized Collision Reconstruction Team leader, had testified earlier in the trial. Now he was recalled to present one specific piece of evidence the defense wanted the jury to see.

A.J. Scott's blood test results.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation crime lab received Scott's blood sample on September 29, 2015, three days after the crash. The ethyl alcohol results by gas chromatography came back negative. The drug screen came back negative for everything they tested.

The prosecution's cross-examination of Barrow made a simple point: "Mr. Scott was on duty that night, correct? He was in a uniform in his patrol car. So, we would expect that his blood, alcohol, and his drug test would come back negative."

Barrow agreed. Of course a trooper on duty would test clean. That's the baseline expectation for anyone wearing the uniform. The absence of impairment doesn't excuse the presence of recklessness.

But the defense used Barrow for something else too. The scale diagrams his team produced showed two spots of alcohol at the crash scene. And more importantly for the defense's theory, Barrow testified about the grass in the median.

"It was measured to be anywhere from 2 and 1/2 to 3 feet high," Barrow said. The defense attorney asked if he considered that high. "Absolutely, I consider it high."

And could that affect visibility? "Yes, it did. It limits the view of vehicles approaching one another, making turns. Of course, you're eventually going to be able to see each other after you get so far into the area, but it does obscure that view."

The defense is building toward something here. If the grass was three feet high, maybe Wall couldn't see Scott's headlights coming over the hill. Maybe Scott couldn't see the Nissan starting its turn. Maybe this was a visibility problem as much as a speed problem.

But the prosecution will argue that visibility cuts both ways. If Scott couldn't see clearly, that's more reason to slow down, not less. And 90 miles per hour through an area with known visibility limitations isn't defensive driving. It's recklessness.

After Barrow stepped down, the court took a brief recess. And then came the moment everyone had been waiting for.

The judge went through the formalities. Did Mr. Scott understand his right not to testify? Had he had enough time to discuss this with his attorney? Did he want to testify?

He did.

Anthony James Scott, 40 years old, former Georgia State Patrol trooper, current Mayor of Buchanan, Georgia, raised his right hand and swore to tell the truth about the night he killed two teenage girls.

His attorney started with the basics. What does Scott do now? He works in land acquisition for a development company. What did he do before that? Law enforcement. When? 2011 to 2015. Where was he raised? Buchanan and Dallas, Georgia.

But before law enforcement, there was something else. Something the defense wanted the jury to understand about who this man is.

A.J. Scott served in the United States Marine Corps from 2007 to 2011. Infantry. He deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, including a tour in Fallujah. He came home wanting to continue serving, so he joined the Georgia State Patrol.

This is character evidence. The defense wants the jury to see Scott not as a reckless driver who killed two kids, but as a man who served his country in war zones and then served his community as a law enforcement officer. Whatever happened that night, this is someone who dedicated his life to service.

Scott attended the 89th Trooper School. He did field training in Thomasville, Jasper, and Cartersville before being assigned to Post 4 in Villa Rica. He worked two to ten crashes a day. He was assigned to Carroll and Douglas counties. On the night in question, he was working the midnight shift, 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.

He described how his shift started. He clocked in from his computer at home as he was leaving. He lived in Buchanan, about five or six miles from the crash site. He started patrolling. Nothing significant at first.

Then he met up with some officers from Bremen under the I-20 bridge to work traffic. That's where his radio died. One of the Bremen officers offered to charge it because Scott didn't have a charger in his car.

At some point, Scott got a call from the communication center in Newnan. Troopers were chasing two vehicles northbound on Highway 16, headed into Carroll County toward Whitesburg. Scott left the bridge and headed south to intercept.

He took Highway 27 south, turned on Linda Lane, then turned right by the jail, heading toward Whitesburg. He got about halfway there when the communication center called off the chase. They'd lost the suspect vehicles.

Scott decided to hang around the area for a while to see if the suspects passed through. He stopped a couple of cars that might have matched the description. They didn't. After a while, he decided to head back to Bremen to get his radio.

And then his attorney asked the question that matters: when you left that area, did you have your radio? No. You had to retrieve it. Yes.

That's the entire justification. A dead radio battery. A routine errand. No emergency. No pursuit. No dispatch. Just a trooper who wanted his equipment back.

His attorney asked about paperwork. Scott admitted he'd fallen behind on crash reports. He'd been written up for not completing them on time. Part of his plan that night was to finish some of those reports on his in-car computer. But first, he needed his radio.

They got to the crash itself. Scott was asked about his lights and sirens. Did he have them on? No. Had there ever been an occasion where he responded to a scene without lights and sirens? Yes, the majority of crashes they worked didn't require emergency response. Lights and sirens were for when you had a chance to save a life, or for a chase.

He wasn't saving a life. He wasn't in a chase. He was driving to get a radio.

What happened moments before the crash? Just driving, Scott said. What direction did he turn when he saw the other car?

"When I noticed the car to the left, I went to the right in the right lane. I was thinking that they would see me. I figured they would end up stopping right there and I didn't want a chance of hitting them."

But the car didn't stop. It kept coming. So Scott went left.

"I realized that they weren't going to stop. So I tried to go left."

His attorney asked about his EVOC training. Had he been told what to do in a situation like this? Yes, Scott said. After he graduated trooper school, they sent him back for simulator training. He was told to go where the car was coming from. But his initial instinct was to go right.

After the collision, Scott activated his blue lights to warn other drivers. He called in a 10-50, the code for a crash. Then he ran up the hill to check on the occupants of the other vehicle. He went to the driver's side first, helped the driver out, walked him to the shoulder, told him to sit down and not move.

He was taken to Tanner Carrollton Hospital. He agreed to have his blood drawn. That was the extent of his involvement in the investigation. The SCRT team took over the scene.

His attorney asked one final question: has this incident been hard for him?

The prosecution objected before Scott could answer. The question called for speculation about his present emotional state. But the question itself was telling. The defense wants the jury to know that this haunts him. That he didn't walk away from this unscathed.

Then the prosecutor stood up. And the cross-examination began.

The prosecutor started with Scott's badge number: 121. And then she made a simple point: when Scott left from under that bridge to chase those suspect vehicles, he left his radio with the Bremen officer. But did he still have a means of communication?

Yes. He had the in-car radio. He could communicate from inside the vehicle.

So leaving to get the portable radio wasn't about safety. It was his choice. It was convenience. It was a trooper who preferred to have his portable radio on his belt and decided that preference was worth driving 90 miles per hour through a rural intersection at midnight.

The prosecutor didn't yell. She didn't gesture dramatically. She just laid out the facts, one question at a time, each one building on the last. This is what good cross-examination looks like. You don't attack the witness. You let the facts do the attacking.

And then she dropped something devastating. Georgia State Patrol keeps records of every traffic stop a trooper makes. At 11:19 that evening, about two hours before the crash, Trooper Scott, badge 121, stopped a vehicle at Old Newnan Road and Cross Plains. The speed? Ninety-six miles per hour.

Let that sink in. Two hours before the crash. Scott pulled someone over for doing 96 miles per hour. He issued a citation. He enforced the law against a civilian for exactly the conduct he would engage in himself two hours later.

Scott said he didn't recall the specific stop. He stopped a couple of vehicles that night. He didn't remember what they were traveling.

But if the record showed he clocked a red sedan doing 96 at 11:19 p.m., would that be accurate? "I believe so."

Think about that for a moment. Two hours before Scott killed two teenage girls while driving 90 miles per hour, he pulled someone over for doing 96. He knew exactly how dangerous that speed was. He enforced the law against civilians who drove that fast. And then he did the same thing himself.

This is the prosecution's strongest piece of evidence. Not the dashcam footage. Not the data recorder. Not the crash reconstruction. This simple fact: Scott knew. He knew what he was doing was dangerous. He knew it was illegal. He knew it violated everything he'd been trained to do and sworn to uphold. And he did it anyway.

The defense can talk about the alcohol bottles. They can talk about the failure to yield. They can talk about the visibility and the grass in the median and all the reasons this might have been someone else's fault. But they can't explain away this: their client pulled someone over for speeding two hours before he killed two people while speeding.

The prosecutor moved to his training. Trooper school taught him the rules of the road. The dangers of speeding. The purpose of speed limits. Georgia's super speeder laws that impose greater fines for driving over 75 on country roads.

How many speeding tickets did Scott write as a trooper? He estimated 15 to 20 a month. For four years. That's somewhere between 720 and 960 speeding tickets. He knew the law. He enforced the law. He just didn't follow it.

Highway 27 was a road Scott traveled regularly when assigned to Carroll County. He knew the speed limit was 55, dropping to 45 in the area approaching Holly Springs Road. He worked crashes where speed injured and killed people.

The prosecutor asked about when law enforcement officers are permitted to speed. On the way to a call with lights and sirens. Responding to an emergency. Perhaps chasing someone who's fleeing.

None of those applied that night, did they?

No.

She walked him through his training. Three weeks of EVOC training on operating patrol vehicles in emergency situations. Defensive driving. Skid control. Steering. Braking. Precision driving. Pursuit liability and "due regard" training.

What does due regard mean? Even if you're running blue lights and sirens, you still have a duty to yield to other drivers at intersections. You have to regard the safety of others on the road.

And then she showed him a photograph. State's Exhibit 6679. The intersection approaching the BP station where the crash occurred. On each side of the road, there are signs showing the suggested speed limit for that curve: 45 miles per hour.

Did Scott see those signs as he drove by them? He didn't believe he did.

Had he driven by them before? Yes.

"Just to be clear, on this particular evening, you are exceeding that posted speed at about 5 seconds before this. You're driving about 90 miles an hour. Is that accurate?"

Yes.

"And you are not running lights and sirens?"

No.

"You are not going to a call?"

No.

"You are going back to the bridge."

Yes.

To get a radio.

The prosecutor sat down. The defense rested. And the court excused the jury until the following morning.

Before the jury left, the defense renewed its motion for a directed verdict on the reckless driving charge and the counts that depend on it. The judge denied the motion.

Tomorrow, closing arguments. And then the jury decides.

What the Jury Saw

Put yourself in that jury box for a moment. You've now heard four days of testimony. You've seen the dashcam footage from Scott's patrol car. You've heard the 911 calls. You've seen the crime scene photos. You've listened to crash reconstruction experts calculate speeds and stopping distances and lines of sight.

And on Day 4, you heard from the man himself.

What story did the prosecution tell you?

They showed you a trooper who knew exactly how dangerous speeding is. He pulled someone over for doing 96 just two hours before the crash. He wrote 15 to 20 speeding tickets every month. He received extensive training on emergency vehicle operation, on pursuit liability, on the duty of "due regard" for other drivers.

And then he drove 90 miles per hour through an intersection with reduced visibility, no lights, no sirens, no emergency call, just to pick up a radio he'd left charging. He saw the signs that said 45 miles per hour. He didn't slow down.

What story did the defense tell you?

They showed you a man who served his country in Iraq and Afghanistan. A Marine who came home and became a state trooper. A first responder who worked hundreds of crashes. A man who, after the collision, immediately called it in, activated his lights to warn other drivers, and ran to help the people in the other car.

They showed you alcohol bottles at the scene. An EMT who smelled birthday cake vodka in the driver's vomit. Grass in the median that was three feet high and could have blocked visibility. A car that pulled into the intersection when it should have yielded.

And they showed you blood test results that proved their client was completely sober. Whatever happened that night, it wasn't because he was impaired.

Both stories are true. That's what makes this case so difficult.

Scott did serve his country. He did try to help after the crash. He wasn't drunk or high. The teenagers did have alcohol in the car. The driver did pull into his path.

But Scott was also driving 90 miles per hour. He wasn't responding to an emergency. He knew the rules. He enforced the rules against others. And he broke them himself.

The jury has to decide which story matters more. Is this a tragedy caused by a teenager who failed to yield, with the trooper as an unfortunate participant? Or is this a tragedy caused by a trooper who decided the speed limit didn't apply to him, and two girls paid the price?

I've watched a lot of defendants testify. Scott was calm, controlled, prepared. He didn't break down. He didn't get defensive. He answered the questions directly and concisely. In terms of courtroom performance, he did what he needed to do.

But the facts are the facts. And the prosecutor's cross-examination established the one thing that's hardest for the defense to explain away: Scott stopped someone for doing 96 just hours before he did 90 himself. He knew. He knew exactly what he was doing and how dangerous it was.

The jury will remember that tomorrow when they hear closing arguments. And they'll have to decide whether a badge makes a difference in how we judge these choices.

Why This Matters

My father, Steven M. Askin, spent his career defending people accused of crimes. He believed in the presumption of innocence more than almost anything. He went to prison for refusing to betray attorney-client privilege. He was criminally prosecuted for teaching people their constitutional rights from a coffee shop.

He taught me that the system only works when we hold everyone to the same standards. No exceptions. Not for prosecutors. Not for judges. Not for people who wear badges.

This case is about exactly that question.

A.J. Scott was a Georgia State Patrol trooper. He was trained to enforce the law. He took an oath to protect the public. And when he drove 90 miles per hour through an intersection without emergency justification, two seventeen-year-old girls died.

If you or I did that, what would happen? We'd be charged. We'd be prosecuted. We'd face the consequences of our choices. The fact that we didn't mean to hurt anyone wouldn't matter. The fact that the other driver might have made a mistake wouldn't matter. We'd be held accountable for driving recklessly.

But Scott wasn't charged immediately. It took three grand juries to get an indictment. The first grand jury declined to charge him at all. The second indicted him only on misdemeanors, which a judge later threw out. It took two years and relentless pressure from the victims' families to finally get felony charges filed.

And in between? Scott got elected to the Buchanan City Council. Then he became mayor. The man who killed two teenage girls while driving 90 miles per hour to pick up a radio became a local political figure while the families waited for justice.

That's the system we're watching. That's what this trial is really about.

I've been doing this work long enough to know that the system treats people differently based on who they are. My father knew it too. He saw it every day in the courtrooms of West Virginia. The rich get better lawyers than the poor. The well-connected get more favorable treatment than strangers. And law enforcement officers get the benefit of doubts that would never be extended to the people they arrest.

That's not cynicism. That's observation. And this case is a case study in exactly that phenomenon.

When an ordinary citizen kills someone while driving recklessly, the investigation focuses on what they did wrong. When a law enforcement officer kills someone while driving recklessly, the investigation focuses on what the victims might have done wrong. Look at the testimony we've heard. Alcohol bottles. Birthday cake vodka. Failure to yield. The defense has spent four days trying to shift responsibility onto a car full of teenagers who may or may not have been drinking.

But here's what they can't shift: Scott was driving 90 miles per hour. Scott wasn't responding to an emergency. Scott had received extensive training on exactly why what he was doing was dangerous. Scott pulled someone over for doing 96 mph just two hours earlier.

The defense argues that Scott wasn't impaired, that the other driver failed to yield, that the crash was an accident, not a crime. And those arguments have merit. The blood test was negative. The teenagers did have alcohol in the car. The driver did pull into the intersection.

But the core question remains: should Scott be held to the same standard as everyone else? Or does the badge provide a layer of protection that ordinary citizens don't get?

Day 4 made that question crystal clear. Scott received extensive training on emergency vehicle operation. He knew the dangers of speeding. He enforced the law against others who drove 96 miles per hour on that very same night. And then he did the same thing himself, without any of the justifications that would make it legal.

The prosecution's cross-examination was devastating precisely because it showed the hypocrisy at the heart of this case. Scott stopped someone for speeding two hours before he killed two girls while speeding. He knew. He knew what he was doing was dangerous. He did it anyway.

And here's the thing that really gets me. If Scott had been responding to an emergency, none of us would be here. If he'd been chasing a suspect or racing to save someone's life, we'd understand. That's what troopers do. That's why we give them patrol cars with powerful engines and train them to drive fast when the situation demands it.

But he wasn't doing any of that. He was picking up a radio. A radio. That's the justification for driving 90 miles per hour, for not using his lights or sirens, for not slowing down when he approached an intersection with known visibility problems.

The defense will argue that intent matters. That Scott didn't mean to hurt anyone. That he made a split-second decision to go right, then left, trying to avoid the collision. That he's a good man who made a tragic mistake.

All of that may be true. But the law doesn't require intent to kill. It requires reckless conduct. It requires a conscious disregard for a known risk. And driving 90 miles per hour through an intersection with limited visibility, without lights or sirens, without any emergency justification, fits that definition.

The jury will decide. And whatever they decide will say something important about whether the rules apply equally to everyone in Georgia.

The Bigger Picture

We're now through four days of testimony. The state has presented its case. The defense has presented its case. Both sides have rested. Tomorrow brings closing arguments, jury instructions, and then deliberations.

Let me recap where we are.

Day 1 gave us the human tragedy. We heard from the survivors, Dillon Wall and Benjamin Finken. We heard from the first responders who arrived at the scene. We heard the 911 calls and saw the body camera footage. We understood what was lost that night.

Day 2 gave us the science. We heard from the crash reconstruction experts who analyzed the data. We learned that Scott was traveling 91 miles per hour five seconds before impact, 82 miles per hour at the moment of impact. We saw the physics of a heavy patrol car striking a light sedan. We watched the dashcam footage frame by frame.

Day 3 gave us the medical evidence and the expert battle. We heard from the ER physician who treated Benjamin Finken. We heard from the medical examiner who performed autopsies on both victims. We heard from the defense's accident reconstruction expert, who challenged the state's calculations and emphasized Dillon Wall's failure to yield.

And Day 4 gave us the defendant's story. We heard Scott explain why he was driving so fast, what he saw, what he tried to do, and how he responded after the crash. We heard the prosecutor confront him with his own training and his own enforcement actions. And we heard the defense rest its case.

Tomorrow, the attorneys will make their final arguments. The prosecution will emphasize the speed, the lack of emergency justification, the training Scott received and ignored. The defense will emphasize the alcohol, the failure to yield, the visibility issues, and Scott's clean blood test.

Then the judge will read the jury instructions, explaining the elements of each charge and the burden of proof the state must meet. And then twelve ordinary citizens will go into a room and decide whether A.J. Scott committed crimes when he killed Kylie Lindsey and Isabella Chinchilla.

The charges are:

Two counts of second-degree vehicular homicide, one for each girl who died. These are misdemeanors in Georgia, but they carry potential jail time.

Two counts of serious injury by vehicle, one for each survivor who was seriously injured. These are felonies.

Reckless driving. This is what the directed verdict motion was about. The defense argued there's no evidence Scott drove recklessly. The judge disagreed and let the charge go to the jury.

Violation of oath of office. As a law enforcement officer, Scott took an oath to uphold the law. The state argues he violated that oath when he broke the speeding laws he was sworn to enforce.

And speeding itself. The most straightforward charge. Was Scott exceeding the speed limit? The data says 90 miles per hour in a 55 zone dropping to 45. The answer seems obvious.

The jury will have to consider each charge separately. They could convict on all of them, some of them, or none of them. They could find that Scott was speeding but not reckless. They could find that he was reckless but not criminally responsible for the deaths. They have options.

What they can't do is ignore the question at the heart of this case. Does the system hold its own accountable? Or does the badge provide protection?

If you're the Lindsey family or the Chinchilla family, what are you thinking tonight? Nearly ten years of waiting. Three grand juries. One mistrial. Countless delays. And finally, finally, the case has gone to a jury. Tomorrow you'll hear the attorneys make their final arguments. And then you'll wait some more.

If you're A.J. Scott, what are you thinking? You took the stand today. You told your story. You answered the prosecutor's questions. You did what you could. Now it's out of your hands. Tomorrow you'll listen to the lawyers argue about your future, and then twelve strangers will decide whether you go free or face consequences for the worst night of your life.

If you're one of those twelve jurors, what are you thinking? You've absorbed four days of evidence. You've seen the footage. You've heard from experts and witnesses and the defendant himself. Tomorrow you'll hear the arguments, and then you'll have to decide. Guilty or not guilty. Crime or tragedy. Accountability or exoneration.

That's where we are. The evidence is in. The stories are told. Tomorrow we find out what the system decides to do with them.

What to Watch For

Day 5 brings closing arguments and jury instructions. Here's what I'll be paying attention to:

The prosecution's closing will need to keep it simple. The data recorder shows 90 miles per hour. The training records show Scott knew better. The traffic stop records show he enforced these laws against others. The emergency justification is non-existent. This isn't complicated. A trooper broke the rules he was sworn to enforce, and two girls died.

Watch for how they structure the argument. Good prosecutors tell a story. Great prosecutors make the jury feel like they're part of that story, like their verdict is the next chapter in a narrative that demands justice. I expect they'll start with Kylie and Isabella, remind the jury who these girls were, what they had ahead of them, and what was taken from them.

Watch for how they handle the alcohol issue. The defense has hammered the bottles, the birthday cake vodka, the failure to charge Wall with DUI. The prosecution needs to remind the jury that none of that matters if Scott wasn't driving recklessly. They'll likely argue that even if Wall was impaired, even if he failed to yield, Scott's speed made the crash unsurvivable. At 55 miles per hour, the crash reconstruction expert testified, Scott could have stopped in time.

That's the key point. Not "the crash wouldn't have happened at 55," but "Scott could have stopped." The crash wasn't inevitable. It was a choice. And that choice belongs to the man who was driving 90 miles per hour.

The defense's closing will emphasize reasonable doubt. They don't have to prove Scott is innocent. They just have to raise enough questions that the jury can't be certain beyond a reasonable doubt that he's guilty. The alcohol. The visibility. The failure to yield. The enhanced video that shows how fast the other car appeared. The blood test that proves Scott was sober.

Watch for how they handle the 96 mph traffic stop. That was the prosecution's best moment on cross-examination. Scott stopped someone for speeding just hours before he did the same thing himself. The defense will need to address this somehow. Perhaps they'll argue that Scott was more alert to traffic that night because he'd just made that stop. Perhaps they'll argue that the situations were different. Whatever they say, they can't ignore it.

I'll be curious to see if they address the character evidence directly. They spent time on Scott's Marine Corps service, his deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan, his years of service as a trooper. They want the jury to see him as a good man who made a tragic mistake, not a reckless driver who killed two kids. Will they lean into that in closing? Or will they focus purely on the facts of the crash itself?

The jury instructions will be crucial. The judge will explain what the prosecution must prove for each charge. She'll explain the difference between negligence and recklessness. She'll explain the elements of vehicular homicide. The defense fought hard on some of these charges. Pay attention to how the judge frames them.

Reckless driving, in particular, is worth watching. The defense moved for a directed verdict on that charge, arguing there wasn't enough evidence to send it to the jury. The judge denied the motion, but the defense clearly thinks that's their weakest link. If they can convince the jury Scott wasn't reckless, the felony charges that depend on reckless driving might fall too.

And then the jury deliberates. How long they take will tell us something. A quick verdict usually means the jury found the case clear-cut one way or the other. Extended deliberations suggest disagreement, questions, careful examination of the evidence.

I'll be watching for notes from the jury. If they ask for testimony to be read back, which testimony? If they ask for clarification on the law, which law? These requests tell us what the jury is focused on, what's causing disagreement, where the case hinges.

Whatever happens, we'll cover it. This case has taken nearly ten years to get here. We're going to see it through to the end.