Georgia v. A.J. Scott

Dylan Wall sat in that witness chair and did something I've rarely seen in a courtroom.

He told the truth about what he doesn't know.

Ten years ago, Dylan was eighteen years old. He'd just graduated high school. He was on a workout plan, trying to bulk up. That Saturday night in September 2015, he was driving four of his friends to McDonald's. Two of them, Kylie Lindsey and Isabella Chinchilla, were teenage girls he'd known for about a year. The other was his childhood neighbor, Benjamin Finken.

Dylan remembers putting the keys in the ignition at his friend TJ's house. He remembers nothing after that. Not the drive. Not the turn. Not the impact. Not his fractured skull. Not the chaos of the scene. Not the ambulance ride. Not the days he spent unconscious in the hospital.

The next thing he remembers is waking up at Grady Memorial Hospital, seeing his boss standing there, and having no idea what day it was or how he got there.

Two of his passengers never woke up at all.

Kylie Lindsey was seventeen. Isabella Chinchilla was sixteen. They died because a Georgia State Patrol trooper was driving 91 miles per hour on a dark, wet road. He wasn't responding to a call. He wasn't running lights and sirens. He was just driving fast because he could.

And today, nearly ten years later, that trooper finally faced a jury.

His name is Anthony James Scott. A.J. to his friends. He was 30 years old on the night of the crash. A former Marine who served in Fallujah. A Georgia State Patrol trooper since 2011. And now, the current mayor of Buchanan, Georgia.

Yeah. You read that right. The man on trial for killing two teenage girls is a sitting mayor. He won that election while these charges were pending. He won reelection while these charges were pending. For nearly a decade, he's been building a political career while the families of Kylie Lindsey and Isabella Chinchilla have been waiting for justice.

That wait ended today. Sort of.

Day 1 of this trial gave us something rare in criminal cases. We heard from the survivors. We heard from the witnesses. We watched body camera footage from the first officers on scene. And we started to understand what happened on that dark stretch of Highway 27 in Carroll County, Georgia.

But we also heard what the defense wants this jury to believe. And folks, their argument boils down to something simple: blame the dead girls' driver.

Dylan Wall failed to yield, they say. Dylan Wall turned left without looking. This was just an accident.

An accident. That's the word defense attorney Mac Pilgrim used in his opening statement. He even looked it up in the dictionary for the jury. An unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally.

Here's the thing about that argument. Dylan Wall did turn left. He did pull out onto Highway 27. But Dylan Wall wasn't driving 91 miles per hour in a 55 zone. Dylan Wall wasn't a trained law enforcement officer who knew exactly how dangerous that speed was. Dylan Wall wasn't the one who passed two caution signs warning of an intersection ahead and ignored them both.

A.J. Scott did all of those things. And two girls are dead because of it.

My father spent 23 years as a criminal defense attorney in West Virginia. He taught me that the system's instinct is always to protect its own. When cops become defendants, the rules bend. The delays multiply. The benefit of the doubt expands to cover territory it would never cover for anyone else.

This case proves him right. Three grand juries. Two trials. Ten years. A mistrial when prosecutors failed to disclose evidence. Recusals from the original judge and district attorney. And through it all, A.J. Scott has been walking free, winning elections, living his life.

Today, for the first time, he had to sit at that defense table and listen to what he did.

Let me walk you through it.

Senior Assistant District Attorney Heather Waters didn't waste time. She put the jury right there on that road, right there in that moment.

Dylan, Ben, Kylie, Isabella. Four teenagers heading back to their friend TJ's house after a McDonald's run that never happened. It was late, around 11:30 at night. The road was wet. It was dark. Dylan was in the left lane, approaching the turn onto Holly Springs Road.

He looked ahead. The roadway was dark. Nothing to see.

And then A.J. Scott came over the hill at 83 miles per hour.

Waters walked the jury through the physics of it. At that speed, Scott was traveling approximately 121 feet per second. Dylan was almost the length of a football field away when he began his turn. There was no way, no possible way, for Dylan to know that a patrol car was screaming toward him without lights, without sirens, at nearly double the speed limit.

Scott saw them. He turned right first, then realized his mistake and tried to turn back left. Only then did he hit the brakes.

It was way too late.

The impact sent their car spinning. Kylie was ejected onto Holly Springs Road. She suffered a lacerated liver and massive internal bleeding. She died at the hospital. Isabella suffered a fractured pelvis and what doctors call a transection of the thoracic aorta, the largest artery in the body. She also had brain bleeding. She died at the scene before first responders could even get her out of the car.

Dylan fractured his skull. He lost hearing in his right ear. He has a scar on his arm that he carries to this day. Ben suffered traumatic brain injury and brain bleeding. He spent time at the Shepherd Center for rehabilitation, relearning how to read and write, proving he still had the cognitive function to drive.

And A.J. Scott? According to Waters, he told Corporal Alexander at the scene exactly what happened.

"I went right, but I should have went damn left."

When asked if he was running lights and sirens, if he was going to a call, Scott's answer was simple: "No, I wasn't going nowhere."

Defense attorney Mac Pilgrim took a different approach. He thanked the jury. He talked about the revolutionary nature of jury trials. He quoted Latin. And then he pulled out a loaf of bread.

I'm not kidding. The man brought a loaf of bread to a vehicular homicide trial.

His point, eventually, was that juries are like quality control inspectors at a bread factory. Your job is to check the state's work. Make sure they gave you what they said they'd give you. Make sure the ingredients match the label.

It was a clever metaphor. I'll give him that. But it also told me exactly what his strategy is going to be: attack the process, not the facts.

Pilgrim acknowledged the tragedy. He said the loss of those two young girls is something that can never be made right. He said no matter what happens, there's a hole in those families' lives that will never be filled. He seemed genuinely sorry.

But then he pivoted to blame.

Dylan Wall made a left-hand turn without yielding, Pilgrim told the jury. You're going to see videos. You're going to hear testimony. There was no yielding. There was no turn signal. Dylan's vehicle was traveling somewhere between 22 and 23 miles per hour as he made that turn.

There was alcohol in the car, Pilgrim said. Both in the vehicle and throughout the crash scene. Two different types of alcohol. Ben Finken was combative in the ambulance. Dylan Wall vomited in the back of the ambulance.

Pay close attention to those details, he told the jury.

And then came the word that made my blood pressure spike.

"An accident is an unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally. A secondary definition is an event that happens by chance or without apparent or deliberate cause. That's what this is, folks. This is an accident. It's all it's ever been."

Look. I'm not here to tell you that Dylan Wall bears no responsibility. That's for the jury to decide. But I am here to tell you that calling this "an accident" erases the choices A.J. Scott made that night.

He chose to drive 91 miles per hour. He chose to do it without lights or sirens. He chose to do it on a wet road at night. He chose to ignore the caution signs warning of the intersection ahead. He chose speed over safety, and two girls paid for that choice with their lives.

That's not an accident. That's recklessness. And recklessness has consequences.

At least, it's supposed to.

The state's first witness was TJ Sylvie, now 28 years old. Back in 2015, he was 18, just like Dylan. His grandparents owned the property where the group had gathered that night, a workshop with a weight bench downstairs and an office space upstairs.

TJ knew Dylan because his grandfather on his mom's side was neighbors with Dylan's parents. He knew Ben the same way. He'd met Kylie and Isabella through Dylan, through mutual friends.

That Saturday night, TJ called Dylan randomly to hang out. What was supposed to be just the two of them turned into a group of six: TJ, Dylan, Ben, Kylie, Isabella, and Dylan's 16-year-old brother Quinton.

They weren't there long. TJ and Dylan went downstairs to lift weights, competing to see who could bench press the most. The girls stayed upstairs listening to music. Maybe 15 or 20 minutes passed before the girls said they were hungry.

So four of them piled back into Ben's Nissan Sentra. Quinton stayed behind because it was already a tight fit. Dylan drove because Ben had only had his license for about a month and couldn't legally drive at night.

They were supposed to go to McDonald's and come right back.

TJ and Quinton waited. Thirty minutes passed. Forty-five minutes. They started calling everyone's phones. No answer. The phones just rang and rang, then nothing.

Finally, TJ couldn't take it anymore. He and Quinton got in the car and drove the route their friends would have taken. As they approached Holly Springs Road, they saw blue lights.

They pulled into the BP gas station at the intersection. TJ talked to a sheriff's deputy, asked if he knew who was in the wreck. The deputy told him to leave because it was past curfew. TJ left, but he circled back around on Highway 27, made a U-turn, came back by the scene.

It was their car.

He pulled back into the gas station and talked to another officer. This time, the officer confirmed it. Your friends were in the wreck. Two people have passed away.

TJ and Quinton drove to Higgins General Hospital in Bremen, where they learned Ben had been taken. Then they followed the ambulance to Grady Memorial in Atlanta, where Dylan was.

TJ described seeing Dylan that night. "He was out of it. It was almost like he was concussed. You're just in a daze state where you don't really know what's going on."

Defense attorney Pilgrim's cross-examination focused on the intersection itself. TJ admitted he'd made that left turn onto Holly Springs Road many times. His parents had warned him to avoid that intersection when he first started driving. It was a dangerous turn.

That's going to be a theme in this trial. The defense wants you to believe this intersection was inherently dangerous, that anyone turning there was taking a risk, that Dylan Wall should have known better.

But here's what the defense didn't ask TJ: How many times have you made that turn while a state trooper was flying toward you at 91 miles per hour without warning lights?

My guess is never.

Christopher Butler was driving home from coaching a baseball game at Lake Point complex in Cartersville. He'd been coaching 17 and 18-year-olds for East Cobb, a competitive travel team. It was late, raining, and he just wanted to get home to Mount Zion.

He got off I-20 at exit 111, the Bremen exit, and turned left onto Highway 27. As he drove under the bridge, he noticed Bremen police officers sitting there, running traffic. Nothing unusual.

Then a car pulled out of the Kangaroo gas station ahead of him and turned left. Butler moved into the right lane because he was going to turn right at Bow Junction anyway. He was behind the other car, driving at normal speed, not paying much attention.

The car ahead went to make a left turn at the BP station. Butler was in his lane, not concerned. And then he heard it.

A loud crash.

He looked in his rearview mirror and saw a car go up a hill with stuff flying everywhere. He immediately picked up his phone and called 911.

The 911 call is important for what Butler didn't see. He didn't notice a patrol vehicle in the opposite lane. He didn't see lights or sirens. He didn't know a state trooper was involved until the next morning when he found out more about the accident.

Butler told the dispatcher that a car was turning left at the road beside the BP and another car hit it. It looked bad, he said. Really bad.

The dispatcher was confused because they'd already received a call about an accident right there at the I-20 bridge. Were there two accidents? Butler said no, this was about half a mile from the bridge, right at Holly Springs Road.

It took a few minutes to sort out. Two different locations, both near the same exit. The dispatcher said they'd send units to both just to be safe.

Butler went home and went to bed. The next day, he learned two people had died and a trooper was involved.

This witness matters because he's completely independent. He had no connection to anyone in either vehicle. He was just driving home from a baseball game. And what he saw, what he heard, what he didn't see, tells us something crucial about the conditions that night.

It was dark. It was wet. It was rainy or at least misty. The road was slick. And Christopher Butler, driving behind Dylan Wall's car, never saw the patrol vehicle coming. Never saw lights. Never saw sirens. Just heard the crash.

If an independent driver couldn't see Scott coming, how was Dylan supposed to?

Benjamin Finken is 27 years old now. He works as a welder for a company called Division Five. He's been welding since high school.

Back in September 2015, he was 17. He'd only had his driver's license for about a month, maybe a little over. He'd known Dylan since before he was born. Their families were neighbors. TJ's grandfather lived right between them on North Flat Rock Road in Douglasville.

That night, Ben was at his girlfriend Bethany's house when Dylan called. Dylan's truck was broken, and he wanted Ben to drive them to TJ's place. The girls, Kylie and Isabella, showed up at Dylan's house separately. Then all five of them, plus Dylan's younger brother Quinton, piled into Ben's Nissan Sentra and headed out.

Ben drove the route he knew: left out of the driveway, down to Chicago Avenue, right to the intersection, left onto South Flat, across the tracks to Highway 78, then onto I-20 to the Bremen exit.

Halfway there, one of the girls said she was hungry. They wanted to stop at McDonald's. But Ben was in the left lane and missed the turn. Dylan told him to just go to TJ's. They'd find snacks there, and if the girls were still hungry, they'd come back out for food.

They got to TJ's. Ben doesn't remember exactly how long they were there. Maybe 15 or 20 minutes. Dylan and TJ went downstairs to lift weights. Ben was upstairs with Quinton and the girls, eating cupcakes from some senior party TJ had extras from.

But cupcakes weren't enough. The girls wanted real food. So they decided to make a McDonald's run. Quinton stayed behind. The other four got back in Ben's car, but this time Dylan drove because Ben still had a curfew on his license and it was getting late.

Ben sat in the front passenger seat. Isabella was behind him. Kylie was behind Dylan.

They stopped at the Kangaroo gas station. Dylan went inside to buy Black and Mild cigarillos, the wood tip vanilla kind. Ben stayed in the car, on his phone, arguing with Bethany about not spending enough time with her.

He told her he loved her. She said "I know" but didn't say it back. That stung. He was staring at his phone, upset, as they approached the turn onto Holly Springs Road.

Then Dylan asked him something.

"Do you see headlights?"

Ben looked up from his phone. He looked right, toward the oncoming traffic lane.

"Nope. I don't see any headlights."

Dylan made the turn.

Ben put his phone down. Looked right again.

Headlights.

The next thing he remembers is waking up at Grady Memorial Hospital.

I want you to sit with that for a moment. Dylan asked his passenger to check for headlights. Ben looked. He saw nothing. They started the turn. And then, out of nowhere, headlights appeared.

This wasn't a case of teenagers being reckless. This wasn't a case of someone blowing through an intersection without looking. Dylan asked. Ben looked. The road appeared clear.

A.J. Scott was moving so fast, covering so much distance so quickly, that by the time anyone could see him coming, it was already too late.

Ben spent over a week in the hospital. He suffered traumatic brain injury. He had to go to the Shepherd Center for rehabilitation, proving he could still read, still write, still remember things, still react fast enough to drive. The therapy lasted about three months.

Has his memory come back over the years? "Not really," he said. "It's pretty much been the same throughout. There's still big spaces that I just don't remember."

The prosecution showed photos of Ben in the hospital. Him lying in the ICU. A close-up of his face, bruised and battered. Evidence of what happened to a 17-year-old kid who did nothing wrong except ride in a car with his friends.

On cross-examination, Pilgrim focused on the alcohol. Ben admitted there was beer at the scene. He admitted he didn't know where it came from. He admitted that he and the others had consumed alcohol at TJ's place before, on previous occasions. He admitted the plan that night might have included drinking eventually.

But Ben also testified that he didn't remember anyone actually drinking that night. He wasn't drinking. He doesn't remember the others drinking. The alcohol was present, but there's no evidence anyone was impaired.

Pilgrim also pushed on the intersection. How many times had Ben been through there? He'd driven through it himself five or six times. He was familiar with Highway 27 being the major thoroughfare, the primary road. He knew about yielding to oncoming traffic.

And then Pilgrim asked about the moment of impact.

"Do you remember coming to a stop?"

"No, I don't remember coming to a stop."

The implication was clear. The defense wants the jury to believe Dylan rolled through that turn without stopping, without yielding, without looking properly. That it was Dylan's failure, not Scott's speed, that caused this crash.

But Ben already told us what happened. Dylan asked about headlights. Ben looked. He saw nothing. They proceeded to turn. The road appeared clear.

The headlights appeared out of nowhere because A.J. Scott was driving 91 miles per hour in the dark without warning lights.

You can't yield to what you can't see coming.

Dylan Wall is 28 years old now. He works for Country Financial as an insurance agent. He's been there about six months.

In September 2015, he was 18. He'd just graduated from Douglas County High School. He was living at his parents' house on North Flat Rock Road, the same road where Ben and TJ's grandfather lived.

Dylan's truck was broken that night, so when TJ called wanting to hang out, Dylan called Ben to come pick him up. Kylie and Isabella were already at Dylan's house when he got off work from Ace Hardware. The girls had come separately.

They all piled into Ben's Sentra. Dylan rode shotgun on the way out because Ben was driving. They went straight to TJ's, no stops. The plan to hit McDonald's fell through when Ben got in the wrong lane, and Dylan told him to just keep going because he didn't want Ben making that risky turn.

Think about that. Dylan was already worried about the safety of that intersection. He already thought it was a risky turn. So instead of having his inexperienced friend attempt it, he told him to skip the McDonald's and go straight to TJ's.

At TJ's, Dylan and TJ went downstairs to work out. They were both on workout plans, trying to get bigger. Dylan was trying to gain weight and wasn't drinking alcohol because of his regimen.

After maybe 10 or 15 minutes, the girls were hungry. So Dylan drove this time because Ben couldn't legally drive at night with his provisional license. Dylan had gotten his license the day he turned 16, two years before this accident. He was the more experienced driver.

He got in the car. Put the keys in the ignition.

And that's the last thing he remembers.

"I don't remember anything since I left TJ's," Dylan told the jury. "Just waking up, I don't know how many days later it was."

He doesn't remember driving anywhere. He doesn't remember making it to McDonald's. He doesn't remember the stop at the Kangaroo. He doesn't remember the turn. He doesn't remember the impact. He doesn't remember the chaos afterward. He doesn't remember the ambulance. He doesn't remember anything until he woke up at Grady and saw his boss standing there.

He spent five or six days in the hospital. Binary skull fracture. Lost hearing in his right ear, which he still deals with today. A scar on his arm.

On cross-examination, Pilgrim brought up Dylan's brother's ID. Turns out Dylan had his older brother Theodore's driver's license in his wallet. Theodore was 21 at the time, meaning Dylan could use that ID to buy alcohol.

Dylan admitted it. He used to buy alcohol with his brother's ID. He admitted there was alcohol found at the scene. He admitted he couldn't explain where it came from because he doesn't remember anything.

But Dylan was adamant: he wasn't drinking that night. He was on a workout plan. He was trying to gain weight. Alcohol wasn't part of his regimen.

Pilgrim pushed on the intersection. Dylan had made that left-hand turn onto Holly Springs Road plenty of times. Ten times? More than ten, less than twenty? He was familiar with it. He knew Highway 27 was the major road. He knew about the requirement to yield to oncoming traffic.

But Dylan can't tell us what happened at that turn because he doesn't remember. He can't tell us if he stopped, if he yielded, if he checked for headlights. The traumatic brain injury erased everything between TJ's driveway and his hospital bed at Grady.

What we do know, from Ben Finken's testimony, is that Dylan asked his passenger to check for headlights before making the turn. We know Ben looked and saw nothing. We know they proceeded to turn, believing the road was clear.

What Dylan can tell us is what kind of intersection it was. Tall grass, he said. A hill. Limited visibility. A turn he'd made many times before without incident.

Until a state trooper came flying over that hill at nearly double the speed limit without any warning.

Josh Lambert was a Bremen police officer back in 2015. He'd been with the department for a little under four years. Today, he's a full-time student at West Georgia University, studying information security. He left law enforcement years ago.

That night, Lambert and Officer Philip Wagner were sitting under the I-20 bridge running traffic. A.J. Scott was there too, but his radio battery was dead. He gave it to one of the Bremen officers to charge, then left when a call came in about a possible chase in Douglas County.

Scott never made it to that chase. At some point, he was heading back, stopped someone for speeding, and then continued north on Highway 27.

Lambert heard the call come out on his radio. Scott had been involved in a vehicle accident just south of Lambert's location. Close enough that if the terrain were flat, he would have been able to see it from where he was sitting.

Lambert responded in less than 30 seconds.

He was wearing a body camera that night, a swipe-on, swipe-off unit mounted on his chest. He activated it at some point. And what that camera captured is devastating.

The footage shows Lambert arriving at the scene. You can hear him calling for units, telling dispatch he's on his way. Then he's there, in the dark, with chaos all around him.

Blue lights flashing. A car up on an embankment, tires still spinning. Smoke and debris filling the air. Dylan Wall still pressing the gas pedal even though the car isn't going anywhere, disoriented, not understanding what's happening.

"Take your foot off the gas," Lambert tells him. "Take your foot off the gas."

There are multiple victims. A young woman ejected onto Holly Springs Road. Officer Wagner is kneeling beside her, trying to keep her calm, trying to keep her from moving. That's Kylie Lindsey. She's still alive at this point, but she's bleeding out internally.

There's another young woman in the back seat of the car. She's unresponsive. Breathing, but not responsive. Isabella Chinchilla. She would be pronounced dead at the scene.

There's a young man in the front passenger seat. That's Ben Finken. He has a head injury. He's combative. In and out of consciousness.

And then there's the driver. Dylan Wall. Bleeding from his ear. Disoriented. Being escorted away from the vehicle by Trooper Scott himself.

Wait. Let me say that again. A.J. Scott, the man who caused this crash, was helping escort the driver of the vehicle he hit away from the scene.

Lambert described seeing Scott at the scene. He asked Scott how he was doing, what happened. Scott told him, "I went right when I should have went left." He was in shock. Lambert asked if Scott's agency was en route. Scott said he'd told them to come to his location.

The body camera footage is hard to watch. The chaos, the confusion, the urgency. Multiple victims, some of them dying, and first responders trying to figure out who needs help most desperately.

But there's one moment in the dispatch audio that stopped me cold.

"Is the trooper okay?"

That's what dispatch asked. Is the trooper okay?

Not "are the victims okay?" Not "how many injured?" The first question from dispatch was about the trooper.

Two teenage girls were dead or dying. Two young men had traumatic brain injuries. And the system's first concern was for the state trooper who caused it.

That's what happens when law enforcement becomes defendants. The system's instinct kicks in. Protect our own first. Ask about the victims later.

Sergeant Christopher Gordon was the shift supervisor for Bremen Police that night. He was in the center of town when he heard the call about a vehicle collision at that intersection. His two officers, Lambert and Wagner, were already there.

Gordon arrived to what he described as "a lot of confusion, just a lot of things happening." He saw Officer Wagner standing over Kylie Lindsey at the intersection, trying to keep her calm, trying to keep her from moving. She was right there at the stop sign, right at Holly Springs Road.

Gordon went to A.J. Scott first. Asked him how he was doing, what happened. Scott said he went right when he should have went left. He was in shock.

Then Gordon went to the car. There was a young woman in the back seat. Isabella. She was unresponsive. He tried talking to her. Nothing. There was nothing he could do.

By the time Gordon got there, the ambulance crews had already loaded Kylie. Gordon went to the back of the ambulance to ask her who her friend was. Kylie was able to give him a name. Isabella. They did a search around the area and found Isabella's purse outside the vehicle, confirming her identity.

Gordon also had brief contact with one of the young men, though he couldn't remember which one. He thinks he told him to sit down because he was wandering around in shock.

Gordon was wearing a body camera too. His footage was played for the jury. More chaos. More confusion. More evidence of what happens when a car full of teenagers gets hit by a speeding patrol car at night.

The last witness of the day was Joseph Jackson, who in 2015 was a certified nursing assistant working at Tanner Carrollton hospital. Today, he's a sergeant with Douglas County Fire Rescue, working as an EMT and firefighter.

Jackson was driving home from work that night on Highway 27, his regular route, four days a week. He was familiar with that intersection. He passed it constantly.

As he approached, he saw blue lights. He pulled over onto the left shoulder, got out of his pickup truck, and immediately began assessing the scene.

He went to the back seat of the car first, where he found Isabella Chinchilla. She was unresponsive. He checked for a pulse. She had one, but it was very faint. She took one deep, labored breath. He checked her pupils.

Fixed and dilated.

If you're not familiar with that term, it means the pupils don't react to light. It usually signifies some type of nervous system trauma. Brain trauma. Jackson knew right away that it wasn't good.

He told the officer nearby that the young woman in the back seat "looked bad."

Then Jackson moved to the front passenger seat, where Ben Finken was. Ben was hysterical. Emotional. Kind of screaming. Rocking back and forth. In shock. But he was breathing. He was alive. There wasn't much Jackson could do for him at that moment.

Jackson then saw A.J. Scott sitting on the ground in front of the patrol car. Scott seemed fine. Jackson didn't offer assistance because it wasn't needed.

Past Scott, lying in the road, was Kylie Lindsey. An officer was kneeling beside her. She was talking. She was breathing. She obviously had a pulse. But she was in bad shape.

When the ambulance arrived, Jackson gave his report to the crew. He told them the young woman in the back seat was probably past saving. There were two people alive and doing okay. But the young woman in the road was probably the worst off of those who could still be helped. She needed treatment first.

That's triage. That's the terrible math that first responders have to do in situations like this. Who can we save? Who can't we save? Who needs help most urgently?

Jackson was there maybe five to eight minutes before he got back in his truck and drove home. He passed the scene again the next morning on his way to work. The vehicle was still there.

On cross-examination, Pilgrim established that Jackson was an experienced first responder who had been to hundreds and hundreds of automobile collisions over the past decade. He was familiar with trip sheets and patient care reports. He understood the importance of documenting everything quickly while it was still fresh.

But Pilgrim's cross didn't change the core of Jackson's testimony. Isabella Chinchilla was dying in that back seat. Her pupils were fixed and dilated. Brain trauma. Nervous system damage. She never had a chance.

And A.J. Scott was sitting on the ground in front of his patrol car, seemingly fine, while the teenage girl he hit bled out in the wreckage.

What the Jury Saw

Day 1 gave this jury something unusual. They got to hear from the survivors.

In most vehicular homicide cases, the people who could tell you what really happened are dead. The prosecution has to rely on accident reconstruction, physical evidence, expert testimony. They have to piece together the story from the fragments left behind.

But in this case, two of the four people in that car survived. Ben Finken and Dylan Wall are alive. They're damaged. They carry the scars, physical and mental. They have holes in their memory that will never be filled. But they're here. They testified. They told the jury what they remember.

And what they remember matters.

Ben remembers Dylan asking if he could see headlights. Ben remembers looking and seeing nothing. Ben remembers the turn beginning, believing the road was clear. And then, out of nowhere, headlights.

That's not recklessness. That's not failure to yield. That's doing exactly what you're supposed to do, checking for traffic, and still getting hit because a state trooper was driving so fast he couldn't be seen until it was too late.

The jury also got to see the emotional weight of survival. Ben Finken, now 27 years old, sitting in that witness chair and describing memories that end abruptly in violence. He was on his phone, arguing with his girlfriend about not spending enough time together. His last text was "I love you." She said "I know" but didn't say it back. He was upset about that, staring at his phone, when Dylan asked about headlights.

That's the last normal moment he remembers. A teenage argument. A hurt feeling. The small dramas of being seventeen. And then nothing until he woke up at Grady with a traumatic brain injury, struggling to remember his own name.

Dylan Wall's testimony hit differently. He's the one the defense is trying to blame. He's the one who was driving. And yet, listening to him, you realize he can't defend himself because he genuinely doesn't remember what happened. He remembers putting the keys in the ignition. The next thing he knows, he's in a hospital bed wondering what day it is.

There's a particular cruelty to that. The defense can say whatever they want about Dylan's actions that night. They can claim he didn't yield, didn't stop, didn't look properly. And Dylan can't contradict them. Not because he's hiding something. Because a fractured skull and traumatic brain injury erased those memories forever.

The jury also saw the body camera footage. They saw the chaos. They heard the urgency. They saw young people bleeding and dying while first responders scrambled to help them. Officer Lambert arriving within 30 seconds. Dylan Wall still pressing the gas pedal because he's so disoriented he doesn't understand the car isn't going anywhere. Smoke filling the air. Debris everywhere.

They saw Officer Wagner kneeling beside Kylie Lindsey in the road, trying to keep her still, trying to keep her calm. She was talking at that point. She was alive. She gave them Isabella's name when they asked. She didn't know yet that she was bleeding out internally, that her lacerated liver was killing her even as she spoke.

They heard Joseph Jackson, the off-duty EMT, describe finding Isabella in the back seat. Checking her pulse. Finding it faint. Watching her take one deep, labored breath. Checking her pupils. Fixed and dilated. The medical death sentence that tells you the brain is damaged beyond recovery.

And they heard the dispatcher ask, "Is the trooper okay?" before asking about anyone else.

These are the images this jury will carry into deliberation. Not statistics about speed or physics. Not legal arguments about failure to yield. The faces of survivors. The chaos of the scene. The sound of teenagers dying on a dark road because a state trooper wanted to drive fast.

And they heard the defense's argument. Accident. Dylan Wall failed to yield. There was alcohol in the car.

But here's what the defense didn't give them. Any explanation for why A.J. Scott was driving 91 miles per hour without lights or sirens. Any justification for ignoring the caution signs. Any reason why a trained law enforcement officer would barrel through a known intersection at nearly double the speed limit on a dark, wet night.

Because there is no good reason. There's just speed. There's just recklessness. There's just choices made by someone who should have known better.

The jury saw all of that today. How they process it, what weight they give it, that's up to them. But they can't unsee it. They can't unhear the body cam audio. They can't forget Ben Finken's face when he described looking right and seeing nothing.

And they can't forget Dylan Wall sitting in that witness chair, unable to tell them what happened because a skull fracture stole those memories from him. The defense can accuse him of failing to yield. But he can't even agree or disagree. He just doesn't know. And that gap in his memory, that black hole where the most important moments of his life should be, is itself a kind of evidence. Evidence of the violence of this impact. Evidence of what A.J. Scott's speed did to everyone in that intersection.

Why This Matters

My father was criminally prosecuted twice by the system he spent his career fighting. Once for protecting attorney-client privilege. Once for helping people understand their constitutional rights from a coffee shop.

He taught me something I'll never forget. The system protects its own. Always. That's not a conspiracy theory. It's just human nature scaled up to institutions. When one of their guys is in trouble, the instinct is to circle the wagons, to minimize, to delay, to look for ways out.

This case is a case study in that instinct.

Three grand juries. Think about that. The first grand jury declined to indict. The second grand jury only returned misdemeanor charges, and even those were thrown out by a judge. It took a third grand jury to finally bring substantive charges against A.J. Scott.

Two years. That's how long it took to get a real indictment. Two years of the families waiting. Two years of Scott walking free. Two years of the system grinding slowly while two teenage girls stayed dead.

Now compare that to how the system typically works for defendants who don't wear badges. If you're arrested for a crime, the grand jury process usually moves quickly. Indictments come within weeks, sometimes days. The system has every incentive to move fast when you're the target.

But when the target is a state trooper? Suddenly there's time. Time to investigate. Time to consider. Time to give every possible benefit of the doubt. Time for the first grand jury to decline. Time for the second grand jury to soft-pedal. Time for the third grand jury to finally do what should have been done from the start.

Then the first trial ended in mistrial. The prosecution failed to disclose evidence about a theory regarding where the victims were seated in the car. The judge declared a mistrial. Both the judge and the original district attorney eventually recused themselves from the case because of a legal dispute between them.

New prosecutors had to be appointed. The Georgia Attorney General's office brought in the DeKalb County DA's office to handle the case. More delays. More waiting. More time for A.J. Scott to live his life.

Think about what those delays mean for the victims' families. Every month, every year that passes, is another month and year they spend waiting for closure. Every holiday season, every anniversary of the crash, every birthday their daughters will never celebrate, they're wondering when, if ever, justice will come.

And during all of that, what did Scott do? He ran for mayor. And won. He ran for reelection. And won again.

Just three months after his first trial ended in mistrial, while still facing potential retrial for killing two teenagers, A.J. Scott announced he was running for mayor of Buchanan, Georgia. His campaign slogan? "Focused on our future."

What about Kylie and Isabella's future?

That's what Kellie Lindsey, Kylie's mother, asked. "AJ has no shame," she said. "It's almost as if he is taunting us."

Allen Lindsey, Kylie's father, believes Scott's political ambitions were strategic. A way to build political clout, to establish himself as a community leader, to make it harder for the system to hold him accountable.

I don't know if that's true. I can't read A.J. Scott's mind. But I can tell you what it looks like from the outside. It looks like someone who isn't sorry. It looks like someone who believes he did nothing wrong. It looks like someone who thinks the rules don't apply to him.

And for almost ten years, he's been right. The rules haven't applied to him. Not the way they would apply to you or me.

If you or I killed two teenage girls while driving 91 miles per hour, we wouldn't need three grand juries. We wouldn't get two trials. We wouldn't have ten years to run for political office while the case dragged on.

We'd be in prison.

That's what this case is about. Not just what happened on Highway 27 in September 2015. But what happens when law enforcement officers face the same laws they enforce against everyone else.

The equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment says that no state shall deny to any person the equal protection of the laws. That's supposed to mean something. It's supposed to mean that the law applies to everyone the same way, regardless of who you are or what uniform you wear.

My father believed that. He spent his career trying to make it real. He was destroyed for it, prosecuted for helping people understand their rights, convicted for "disrupting the legal system" by teaching citizens how to hold the government accountable.

But the work continues. That's what Justice Is A Process is about. Watching. Questioning. Making sure the system can't operate in darkness. Making sure that when a state trooper kills two teenage girls, someone is paying attention. Someone is demanding answers. Someone is refusing to let the system quietly protect its own.

Do the rules apply to everyone? Or are some people above the law?

That's the question this jury has to answer. Not just "is A.J. Scott guilty?" but "is the system willing to hold one of its own accountable?"

The families of Kylie Lindsey and Isabella Chinchilla have been waiting almost ten years for that answer. They've watched the delays. They've watched the mistrials. They've watched Scott win elections while their daughters stayed dead.

Today, finally, a jury started hearing the evidence. Today, finally, the question is being asked in a courtroom instead of just a news article.

We're going to find out if the answer is justice. Or if the answer is the same one my father got when he challenged the system. More delays. More protection. More proof that some people really are above the law.

The Bigger Picture

This is Day 1 of what promises to be a long trial. We're just getting started. There's so much more evidence to come.

We haven't heard from the accident reconstruction experts yet. The prosecution says they'll testify that if Scott hadn't turned right, if Scott had started braking immediately, if Scott had been driving the speed limit, this collision wouldn't have happened. The defense presumably has their own experts with their own opinions.

Accident reconstruction is part science and part interpretation. The experts measure skid marks, analyze damage patterns, calculate speeds and trajectories. They can tell you with mathematical precision how fast each vehicle was traveling, where each vehicle was positioned at the moment of impact, what the angles were, what the forces were.

But they can also tell you about choices. What would have happened if the trooper had been going 55 instead of 91? What would have happened if he'd started braking when he first saw the other car instead of turning right first? What would have happened if he'd been running lights and sirens, giving other drivers warning that he was coming?

Those counterfactuals matter. Because if the experts can show that Scott had options, that he could have avoided this collision if he'd made different choices, then "accident" becomes a much harder sell. Accidents are unavoidable. Choices have consequences.

We haven't seen the dashcam footage from Scott's patrol car yet. We know it exists. We know it shows something, though the exact contents haven't been detailed in today's testimony.

Dashcam footage is often devastating in cases like this. It shows exactly what the driver saw, exactly when they saw it, exactly how they reacted. If that footage shows Scott flying over the hill, seeing the car in the intersection, and waiting even a moment before hitting the brakes, that's going to be hard for the defense to explain away.

We haven't heard from A.J. Scott himself. The defendant has no obligation to testify. The judge made that clear in his preliminary instructions. If Scott chooses not to take the stand, the jury cannot draw any inference of guilt from that decision.

But defense attorney Pilgrim said in his opening that the jury would hear from Scott. That suggests Scott plans to testify, to tell his side of the story, to explain what happened that night from his perspective.

That will be a pivotal moment in this trial. What will he say? Will he show remorse? Will he take responsibility? Or will he continue to blame Dylan Wall, to call this an accident, to act like he did nothing wrong?

Defendants who testify take an enormous risk. They open themselves up to cross-examination. Every statement they make can be challenged, contradicted, used against them. A defendant who comes across as arrogant, dismissive, or lacking remorse can alienate a jury even if the facts are on their side.

Scott has been the mayor of Buchanan for years now. He's a politician. He's used to being in front of crowds, answering questions, presenting himself in the best possible light. Will those skills serve him on the witness stand? Or will the jury see through the polish to the man who killed two teenage girls and then ran for office?

We also haven't heard about the other incidents. In September 2022, police reports documented incidents involving Scott at a Bremen bar and a Buchanan city park. Questions about his conduct while awaiting retrial. The jury may or may not hear about those. It depends on what the judge rules is admissible.

Character evidence is tricky in criminal trials. Generally, the prosecution can't introduce evidence that the defendant is a bad person just to make the jury dislike them. But there are exceptions. Prior bad acts can sometimes come in to show pattern, intent, or absence of accident. If the prosecution can connect those 2022 incidents to the charges in this case, the jury might hear about them.

For now, what we have is Day 1. Opening statements. Survivor testimony. Body camera footage. An independent witness who heard the crash but never saw the patrol car coming.

It's enough to establish the basic facts. A.J. Scott was driving 91 miles per hour. He wasn't responding to a call. He wasn't running lights or sirens. He hit a car full of teenagers making a left turn. Two of them died. Two survived with life-changing injuries.

The question isn't whether those facts are true. They are. The question is what those facts mean. Is this vehicular homicide? Or is this just a tragic accident?

That's what this trial will decide. That's what this jury will have to wrestle with. And we'll be watching every step of the way.

What to Watch For

As this trial continues, here's what I'm paying attention to.

The accident reconstruction testimony. How fast was Scott really going at the moment of impact? How far away was Dylan's car when Dylan began his turn? Could Dylan have possibly seen Scott coming? Could he have avoided the collision if he'd done something differently? These questions will be answered by experts with degrees and experience, and both sides will have their own interpretations of the data.

The prosecution already previewed what their expert, Will Hartenheimer, will say. He's a former police officer turned accident reconstructionist. He'll testify that if Scott hadn't turned right, the collision wouldn't have happened. If Scott had started braking immediately, the collision wouldn't have happened. If Scott had been traveling the speed limit, the collision wouldn't have happened.

Three different ways Scott could have prevented this. Three different choices he didn't make. That's powerful testimony if the jury believes it.

But the defense will have their own experts. They'll likely argue about reaction time, about the physics of the turn, about what was and wasn't avoidable given the circumstances. They'll try to shift the focus back to Dylan Wall and his decision to turn.

Watch for how the experts handle the question of speed versus visibility. At 91 miles per hour, how far away could Scott's headlights be seen? How quickly does a car traveling that fast close the distance? If Ben Finken looked right and saw nothing, was that because there was nothing to see? Or was it because Scott was so far away that his headlights hadn't crested the hill yet?

Scott's dashcam footage. What does it show? Does it confirm the speed? Does it show the moment of impact? Does it show Scott's actions before and after the crash? This footage could be crucial.

Dashcam footage doesn't lie. It captures what the camera saw at the moment it happened. If that footage shows Scott barreling toward the intersection with no sign of slowing down, if it shows the other car appearing in his headlights with barely any time to react, that's going to be hard for the defense to overcome.

But if the footage shows something else, if it shows the other car suddenly darting into his path, if it shows Scott trying to avoid the collision, that could support the defense theory that this was Dylan's fault.

The alcohol issue. The defense is clearly going to push hard on the presence of alcohol in and around the victims' car. But the prosecution already addressed this. They sent a Nighthawk, a specialized DUI task force officer, to the hospital to look for probable cause. They didn't find any. Dylan's blood showed no alcohol. Ben's blood showed no alcohol. The alcohol was there, but was anyone actually impaired? That's what matters.

This is a classic defense tactic. If you can't defend what your client did, attack the victim. Make the jury think the real bad guy is someone else. Make them wonder if maybe, just maybe, the dead girls' driver was drunk.

But wonder isn't evidence. The blood tests showed no alcohol in Dylan's system. The blood tests showed no alcohol in Ben's system. The presence of beer in the car doesn't mean anyone was impaired. And even if someone had been drinking, that doesn't give state troopers the right to drive 91 miles per hour without lights or sirens.

Watch for how the jury reacts when the defense brings up alcohol. Do they seem receptive to the implication? Or do they see through it?

Scott's testimony. If he takes the stand, what will he say? Will he try to justify his speed? Will he blame the victims? Will he show remorse? His demeanor, his words, his attitude could make or break this case.

I've covered a lot of trials. I've seen defendants who are clearly guilty walk free because they came across as sympathetic on the stand. I've seen defendants who were probably innocent get convicted because they seemed cold or dismissive.

A.J. Scott has been a politician for years now. He knows how to work a crowd. He knows how to present himself in the best possible light. But a jury isn't a campaign rally. They're not looking to be charmed. They're looking for the truth.

If Scott takes the stand and tries to spin this, tries to make himself the victim, tries to blame Dylan Wall while showing no remorse for the girls he killed, I think this jury will see through it. But if he shows genuine remorse, if he admits his speed was wrong even while contesting the charges, he might win some sympathy.

The legal standards. The judge will eventually instruct the jury on what they need to find to convict. Vehicular homicide, serious injury by vehicle, violation of oath of office, speeding, reckless driving. Each charge has its own elements. The jury will have to evaluate the evidence against each one separately.

In Georgia, second-degree vehicular homicide is causing the death of another person through reckless driving. The key question is whether Scott's driving was "reckless" under the law. Speeding alone may not be enough. The prosecution will have to show that Scott's conduct went beyond mere negligence to the level of recklessness, showing a conscious disregard for the safety of others.

Driving 91 miles per hour in a 55 zone, on a wet road, at night, without lights or sirens, through an intersection with caution signs? That sounds reckless to me. But twelve jurors will have to agree.

The violation of oath of office charge is interesting. That's about Scott's conduct as a law enforcement officer. Did he violate his oath by driving the way he did? Did he betray the public trust placed in him? That's a question about what it means to wear a badge, what responsibilities come with that privilege.

And finally, the human element. This jury is made up of people from Carroll County. Some of them have probably driven through that intersection. Some of them have probably known people killed in car accidents. Some of them have probably had interactions with law enforcement, good and bad. How will they respond to what they're hearing? How will they weigh the tragedy against the legal requirements?

That's what juries do. They take the law and the facts and they try to find the truth. Mac Pilgrim was right about one thing in his opening statement. Verdicere. To speak the truth.

That's what we're here for. To watch this jury search for the truth. And to make sure they have all the information they need to find it.

Ten years is a long time to wait for justice. Kylie Lindsey would be 27 years old now. Isabella Chinchilla would be 26. They'd be adults, maybe with careers, maybe with families of their own. Instead, they're frozen in time, forever 17 and 16, forever the victims of a state trooper who drove too fast.

Their families have been waiting almost a decade for this moment. For a jury to hear the evidence. For a verdict to be rendered. For the system to finally say whether what A.J. Scott did was criminal or just an unfortunate accident.

We're watching with them. We're watching for them. And we're going to keep watching until this jury speaks the truth.