Georgia v. A.J. Scott

She kept asking for her mom.

Seventeen years old. Lying in the middle of a wet Georgia highway at midnight. Blood coming from somewhere they couldn't see. First responders surrounding her, strapping her to a backboard, trying to keep her calm while chaos unfolded around them.

And Kylie Lindsey just kept saying it. Over and over. "I want to call my mom."

John McCorley was the first firefighter to reach her. A Subway franchise owner who volunteered with the Bremen Fire Department. He'd worked car accidents at that intersection before. But this one was different. This one had a state patrol car down in the ravine. This one had teenagers scattered across the scene.

He did a quick 360 around the mangled Nissan and went straight to her. She looked the most critical. Semi-conscious, talking, but repeating herself the way people do when their brain is trying to protect them from what's happening to their body.

I want to call my mom. I want to call my mom.

McCorley treated it like a head injury. That repetition, that confusion, that disconnect between what's happening and what you're able to process. He got her on a backboard, got a C-collar around her neck, tried to keep her stable while they waited for the ambulance that would take her to Atlanta Medical Center.

Three or four minutes. That's how long he was with her. Then the ambulance crew took over and he moved to the next victim. There was a lot of next. Multiple patients. A big scene. Deputies and firefighters and paramedics all trying to triage disaster on a dark highway.

Day 2 of the A.J. Scott trial gave us something Day 1 couldn't. It gave us the human cost. Not in legal terms or charging documents or opening statements. In the voices of people who were there. People who held Kylie Lindsey's hand while she asked for her mother. People who watched her condition deteriorate on the 40-minute ride to Atlanta. People who made the call to intubate her because she was going cyanotic and they were losing her.

And then, after the humanity, came the math.

Brandon Stone, a crash reconstruction expert with over a thousand investigations under his belt, took the stand in the afternoon. He'd analyzed the dashcam video frame by frame. He'd pulled the data from the patrol car's event data recorder. He'd done the calculations.

Eighty-two miles per hour.

That's how fast A.J. Scott was driving when he started to react to the Nissan pulling into his path. Not 55, the speed limit. Not 65, a little over. Eighty-two. Nearly 30 miles per hour faster than the law allowed on that stretch of road.

And here's the number that should keep you up tonight: If Scott had been doing 55, he could have stopped in time. The math doesn't lie. The physics doesn't care about badges or blue lights or "I was just going to pick up my radio." At 55 miles per hour, on that road, with that distance, he stops before impact.

At 82, two teenage girls die.

The prosecution is building this case brick by brick. Witness by witness. Data point by data point. And what emerged on Day 2 was a picture of a crash that didn't have to happen. A crash caused not by bad luck or unavoidable circumstances, but by a choice. A choice to drive nearly 30 miles per hour over the speed limit on a wet road at night with no emergency lights, no sirens, and no dispatch-authorized reason to be traveling that fast.

But the defense isn't sitting still. Mac Pilgrim, Scott's attorney, spent significant time on Day 2 establishing something the prosecution would rather the jury forget: there was alcohol in that Nissan. Broken beer bottles. The smell of it permeating the vehicle. A six-pack of Bud Light Lime in the back seat. A Smirnoff Ice bottle in the front passenger floorboard.

The battle lines are drawn. Speed versus alcohol. Recklessness versus failure to yield. A trooper who was going too fast versus teenagers who may have pulled out in front of him.

This is going to be a fight.

The first responders who testified on Day 2 weren't there to take sides. They were there to tell us what they saw. What they did. What it was like to work that scene in the middle of the night, in the rain, with a state patrol car down in the ditch and victims everywhere.

Tommy Craft was the first witness. Retired now, but in 2015 he was the Director of Communications for the Georgia Department of Public Safety. His job that night was simple but crucial: retrieve the dashcam footage from Scott's patrol car.

Craft explained how the Watchguard system works. The camera sits on the windshield, usually on the passenger side, mounted just below the visor. It's constantly recording, but the footage only gets saved when something triggers it. Blue lights. The lapel mic. A significant event like an airbag deployment.

The hard drive and thumb drive were in the trunk. Craft drove out to the body shop where the wrecked patrol car had been towed, popped the trunk, pulled the drives, and brought them back to headquarters. Chain of custody. Evidence preservation. The kind of routine police work that becomes crucial when a case goes to trial.

What those drives contained would become the foundation of the prosecution's case. Video of the moments before impact. Data showing exactly how fast Scott was going. A permanent record of what happened on Highway 27 that night.

After Craft came the firefighters and paramedics. The people who actually touched these victims. Who heard their voices. Who made life-and-death decisions in real time.

John McCorley with Kylie. Amanda Janette Baker with one of the male victims, sitting confused on the side of the road, unable to tell her where he was or what had happened. Marcus Shanks, who transported Kylie to Atlanta Medical Center and watched her condition deteriorate during the 40-minute ride.

Shanks' testimony was particularly difficult to hear. He described arriving at the scene, finding Kylie already on a backboard with fire department personnel around her. She was conscious. Talking. But something was wrong.

"She was in bad shape," Shanks said. "A little cyanotic around the lips."

Cyanotic. That blue tinge that tells a paramedic the patient isn't getting enough oxygen. That the body is starting to fail.

They loaded her into the ambulance. Shanks got in the airway seat. His partner Ken Hicks worked on establishing an IV. They put her on a non-rebreather mask to get more oxygen into her system. And they started the long drive to Atlanta Medical Center, the nearest Level 1 trauma facility.

On the way, her condition got worse. Bruising started developing around her eyes. Her level of consciousness decreased. Blood and secretions in her mouth threatened her airway.

Shanks made the call. They needed to intubate her. Put a breathing tube down her throat to protect her airway and help her breathe. But you can't just shove a tube down someone's throat. You have to sedate them first.

Before they sedated her, before she lost consciousness, Kylie told Marcus Shanks her first name. And she asked for her mom.

That's the last thing we know she said. Her name and a plea for her mother.

They tried to call a helicopter. Weather prevented it. So they drove. Forty minutes, maybe forty-five, Shanks in the back keeping her alive, watching the monitors, managing the airway, doing everything his training had prepared him to do.

When they got to Atlanta Medical Center, the trauma team was waiting. Shanks gave his report: the accident, the patient's condition, the treatment they'd provided. Then he answered their questions, cleared the stretcher, and headed back to Carroll County to do it all again if needed.

That's the job. You don't get to process it in the moment. You don't get to sit with the weight of it. You package the patient, you transport the patient, you hand off the patient, and you move on to the next call.

Jessica, another paramedic, testified about Dillon Wall. The driver of the Nissan. Eighteen years old. Sitting on the side of the road when she arrived, confused, with blood coming from his left ear and a deep laceration on his arm.

She tried to get a baseline on his mental status. Could he tell her his name? Did he know what happened? Where was he going? Was he the driver or a passenger?

He couldn't answer most of it. The confusion was severe. The blood from his ear suggested a head injury, possibly a skull fracture. They got him on a backboard and into the ambulance.

On the way to the hospital, he started asking questions. "Is everyone else okay? Are my friends okay?"

Jessica told him she didn't know. Because she didn't. She knew the other patients were critical, but she hadn't had contact with them. Her job was Dillon. Just Dillon.

He threw up in the back of the ambulance. Started apologizing over and over for spitting in her rig. She told him she'd rather he do that than have it stay in his mouth.

She asked if he'd had anything to eat or drink that night. He said he didn't remember. They were supposed to go to McDonald's, but he wasn't sure if they ever made it.

Had he been drinking alcohol? Yes, he said. He couldn't tell her what kind or how much. But he admitted to drinking.

That admission would become a focal point for the defense. Not because Dillon Wall was ever charged with DUI. He wasn't. But because the presence of alcohol in that car, the smell of it, the broken bottles, the admission from the driver that he'd been drinking, all of it feeds into the defense theory that this crash wasn't A.J. Scott's fault.

Somewhere in the middle of Day 2, something happened in the courtroom that had nothing to do with the evidence. Judge Adele Grubbs had to address the gallery.

During a recess, someone had made a threatening statement to another person in attendance. The judge didn't identify who. Didn't say what was said. But she made herself clear: this is an open courtroom, and the only person who will be removing anyone is her.

"I cannot imagine the grief, the hurt, or the anger that any of the people in this courtroom may feel," she said. "The victim families, certainly I understand that you may be feeling a lot of emotions."

But there would be no threats. No intimidation. Anyone who couldn't follow that rule would be removed for the remainder of the trial.

It's a reminder that trials aren't just legal proceedings. They're human ones. The families of Kylie Lindsey and Isabella Chinchilla have waited nearly a decade for this moment. A.J. Scott's family is watching their husband, their father, their son face the possibility of prison. Emotions run high. Grief doesn't follow courtroom decorum.

But the process has to continue. The evidence has to be heard. And the judge's job is to make sure that happens, no matter how raw the feelings in the room.

After the first responders came the investigators. Jonathan Driscoll, a trooper with the Specialized Collision Reconstruction Team, testified about processing the scene. He was relatively new to SCRT at the time, still shadowing more experienced members, learning how to document the worst crashes the state patrol handles.

He arrived around 12:30 in the morning. It was dark. The road was wet. His boots got ruined in the grass. Two vehicles were off in the grassy area by the wood line on the northbound side of Highway 27 near Holly Springs Road.

The civilian vehicle, the Nissan, was closest to the intersection, up on an embankment facing the tree line. The patrol car was farther north, down in the ditch area, still facing northbound.

Driscoll's job was to document everything. Photograph the scene. Mark the evidence. Gouge marks in the pavement where metal had scraped across asphalt. Tire marks showing the path the vehicles took after impact. Biological material on the roadway. The final rest positions of both cars.

He walked the jury through photo after photo. The area of impact, marked AOI, where the first major evidence of the collision appeared. The scrape marks and gouges that told investigators where the vehicles had been at the moment of impact and where they went afterward.

He explained how they mark evidence with orange paint, pin flags, and nails. How they photograph everything multiple times because once the scene is cleaned up, these pictures are the only permanent record of how things looked.

And then he got to the event data recorder. The so-called "black box" that modern vehicles carry. It's actually the airbag control module, he explained. Its primary job is to monitor the vehicle's systems and decide when to deploy the airbags. But in doing that job, it records data. Speed. Braking. Steering angle. Acceleration.

Investigators can access that data through a port under the steering wheel, the same diagnostic port mechanics use to check your check-engine light. They create an image of the data, a snapshot that doesn't alter the original, and that image tells them what the vehicle was doing in the seconds before and during a crash.

The Nissan was too old for this technology. A 2005 model, predating the widespread use of accessible EDR systems. But Scott's 2012 Dodge Charger patrol car had it. And investigators imaged that data at the scene that night.

What it showed would come later, in Brandon Stone's testimony. But Driscoll laid the foundation. He explained the technology. He established that the data existed and had been properly collected.

And then the defense got its turn.

Mac Pilgrim, Scott's attorney, didn't dispute the crash reconstruction. He didn't challenge the technology or the methodology. Instead, he shifted focus to what was inside the Nissan.

Photo after photo. The top of a broken glass beer bottle with the cap still on, contents spilled into the vehicle. A Bud Light Lime box in the road, torn up. Another intact six-pack box in the back seat, still in a bag. Individual bottle caps and necks scattered around. A Smirnoff Ice bottle on the front passenger floorboard, the only intact bottle found at the scene.

At least two different types of alcohol. Multiple bottles. Some broken, some intact. One six-pack in a store bag, one box without a bag, suggesting possibly more than one purchase.

And the smell. Driscoll testified that with the broken beer bottles in the rear passenger area, the odor of alcohol was permeating the car.

Pilgrim walked Driscoll through his experience with DUI investigations. Had he ever made DUI arrests? Of course. Was he familiar with the totality of circumstances? Yes. The adding up of pieces: 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 4.

The implication was clear. There was alcohol in that car. The driver admitted to drinking. The smell was strong enough that investigators noticed it. And yet no DUI charges were ever filed against Dillon Wall.

Driscoll explained that he wasn't the lead investigator on the case. That would have been Sergeant Chad Barrow. He couldn't speak to the decision-making around DUI charges. He could only testify to what he personally observed and documented.

Chad Barrow took the stand next. Retired now, but in 2015 he was the sergeant in charge of this investigation. He wasn't at the scene that night, he was out of town, but he was assigned as lead investigator when he got back on Monday.

Barrow confirmed that a trooper had been sent to Grady Hospital to investigate Dillon Wall for possible DUI. Trooper Brandon Parker, a member of the Nighthawks, the state patrol's DUI task force. A specialist in exactly this kind of investigation.

But Parker couldn't get close enough to Wall to detect any odor of alcohol. The kid was hooked up to medical equipment. Parker was unable to conduct a proper assessment. And without that assessment, investigators concluded they didn't have probable cause to pursue DUI charges.

The defense pressed on this. If you had probable cause at the scene based on the smell and the broken bottles, couldn't you have gotten a search warrant for blood? Isn't that what you'd do in any other case?

Barrow acknowledged they were trying to establish probable cause. That sending Parker to the hospital was part of that process. But when Parker couldn't make the assessment, the investigation stalled.

The prosecutor pushed back on redirect. This wasn't just alcohol in a car, she pointed out. This was a collision with fatalities and serious injuries. Alcohol in the roadway. Multiple indicators. More than enough to justify sending an investigator to the hospital.

It's a preview of the closing arguments to come. The defense will say the investigation was inadequate, that Wall should have been charged, that the state patrol protected one of its own by not pursuing the DUI angle more aggressively. The prosecution will say the evidence simply wasn't there, that you can't charge someone with DUI based on broken bottles in a car, that the focus on alcohol is a distraction from the real issue: A.J. Scott was doing 82 in a 55.

And then came Brandon Stone.

Stone is a crash reconstruction expert with credentials that fill a resume. Twenty-plus years of law enforcement experience. Over a thousand crash investigations. Certified by the Accreditation Commission of Traffic Accident Reconstruction. Formerly with the state patrol's SCRT team, now working for a private lab.

He was on call the night of the crash. He responded to the scene with Driscoll and Trooper Mims. He helped document the evidence, mark the tire paths, photograph the vehicles. And he was the one who imaged the event data recorder from Scott's patrol car.

The prosecutor walked him through his qualifications. The training. The certifications. The experience. She tendered him as an expert in crash reconstruction and event data recorder analysis. The defense didn't object.

Then Stone got into the methodology. How do you determine how fast a vehicle was traveling before a crash?

You can use the EDR data, he explained. But that data needs to be validated. So he used a second method: time-distance analysis from the dashcam video.

The white dashed lines in the center of the road are a standard length. Usually about 10 feet for the line itself, with 30 feet of space in between. That gives you a known distance of roughly 40 feet from the start of one line to the start of the next.

Video is shot in frames. Stone's first task was to determine the frame rate of the dashcam footage. He checked the metadata, the data about the data embedded in the video file. Thirty frames per second.

Then he watched the video, clicking through frame by frame, counting how many frames it took for the patrol car to traverse that known 40-foot distance.

Ten frames. At 30 frames per second, ten frames equals one-third of a second. Forty feet in one-third of a second means 120 feet per second.

Convert that to miles per hour and you get 82.13.

That measurement was taken at the moment just before Scott started steering to the right, his first reaction to seeing the Nissan pull into his path. Before he hit the brakes. Before impact. At the moment he first realized he was in trouble, A.J. Scott was traveling 82 miles per hour.

Stone also calculated the Nissan's speed. Using the same methodology but different reference points, since the Nissan was traveling perpendicular to the road markings. He determined it was doing about 12 miles per hour, consistent with a vehicle making a left turn from a stopped position.

Then came the stopping distance analysis. This is where the math gets damning.

Stone explained drag factor, the coefficient of friction between a tire and the road surface. It's what determines how quickly a vehicle can decelerate. Dry pavement has a higher drag factor than wet pavement. You can stop faster on a dry road.

The problem was that night had seen rain. The road was wet. But how wet? Stone couldn't go back in time to measure the exact moisture level on the pavement at the moment of the crash. So he used a range, based on published studies by the Society of Automotive Engineers. The lowest value for wet asphalt, 0.45, and a higher value for dry asphalt, around 0.8.

The question: If Scott had been doing the speed limit, 55 miles per hour, at the moment he first reacted to the Nissan, about 156 feet from the area of impact, could he have stopped in time?

On a dry road, yes. Absolutely. He could have been doing up to 61 miles per hour and still stopped before impact.

On a wet road, using the lowest friction value, he could have been doing up to 45 miles per hour and stopped.

The actual conditions were somewhere in between. Stone couldn't say for certain exactly where. But the range tells us something important.

At 55 miles per hour, the speed limit, Scott stops before hitting the Nissan. Even on a wet road, even at the lowest friction value, he stops in time if he's doing 45.

At 82 miles per hour, he doesn't have a chance.

The EDR data backed this up. It showed Scott's speed at various intervals before the crash. At 5 seconds before impact, he was doing 49 miles per hour. Then he accelerated. Little bit of gas, little more gas. The data shows the acceleration pedal inputs increasing.

By the time he saw the Nissan and started to react, he was at 82. By the time he hit the brakes hard enough to activate the anti-lock braking system, it was too late. At impact, despite heavy braking, the patrol car was still doing 66 miles per hour.

A 4,281-pound Dodge Charger, traveling 66 miles per hour, struck a 2,638-pound Nissan Sentra that was making a left turn at about 12 miles per hour.

The physics of that collision killed two teenage girls.

What the Jury Saw

Day 2 was an emotional gut punch followed by a technical seminar. The jury got both barrels.

In the morning, they heard from the people who were there. First responders who held Kylie Lindsey's hand, who listened to her ask for her mom, who watched her deteriorate on the way to the hospital. Paramedics who tried to assess Dillon Wall's mental status and got nothing but confusion. Firefighters who used the jaws of life to cut someone out of a crumpled Nissan.

This is what a crash looks like from the ground. Not statistics. Not legal arguments. People bleeding on wet pavement in the middle of the night, asking questions no one can answer.

Think about what it must have been like to be on that jury, hearing Marcus Shanks describe Kylie's condition in the back of his ambulance. The cyanosis around her lips. The bruising developing around her eyes. The blood and secretions threatening her airway. The decision to sedate her and put a tube down her throat because that was the only way to keep her alive long enough to get her to a trauma center.

And then hearing that before the sedation, before she lost consciousness, she told him her name. And asked for her mom.

That's not evidence in the legal sense. It doesn't prove recklessness. It doesn't establish causation. But it puts a human face on what this case is really about. Two girls who should have grown up to graduate high school, go to college, fall in love, have careers and families and full lives. Instead, they're photographs on a courtroom easel and names in an indictment.

The prosecution wants the jury to feel that. To understand that behind all the technical testimony about speed calculations and drag coefficients, there are real human beings whose lives were destroyed. Kylie Lindsey died. Isabella Chinchilla died. Dillon Wall and Benjamin Finken survived but with traumatic brain injuries that changed their lives forever.

Then in the afternoon, the technical case started to build. The crash reconstructionists. The event data recorder evidence. The frame-by-frame video analysis. The math.

Jonathan Driscoll walked the jury through dozens of photographs. The gouges in the pavement where metal scraped across asphalt. The tire marks showing the paths both vehicles took after impact. The blood on the roadway, marked with orange paint and pin flags. The final rest positions of the Nissan up on the embankment and the patrol car down in the ditch.

Each photograph told part of the story. The area of impact, near the center of the northbound lanes. The rotation of the Nissan after it was struck behind its center of mass. The spinning of the patrol car as it careened off the road. The debris field stretching across the intersection.

For jurors who've never seen a crash reconstruction, this was an education. You don't just look at wrecked cars and guess what happened. You measure. You photograph. You mark every piece of evidence. You use physics and mathematics to reconstruct the collision second by second.

And then came Brandon Stone with the number that will define this trial.

Eighty-two miles per hour. That number hung in the courtroom like a verdict waiting to be delivered.

Stone didn't just assert the number. He showed his work. The dashcam video, shot at 30 frames per second. The known distance between road markings. The frame-by-frame analysis that showed Scott's patrol car covering 40 feet in 10 frames. The math that converts feet per second to miles per hour.

And then the stopping distance calculations. The drag factor analysis. The conclusion that at 55 miles per hour, Scott could have stopped in time. That the speed limit existed for a reason. That exceeding it by 27 miles per hour was the difference between a near-miss and a double fatality.

The jury watched Stone work through these calculations. They saw the EDR data showing Scott's speed at intervals before the crash. They saw him accelerating, not braking. Little bit of gas. A little more. Building speed on a wet road at night with no emergency to respond to.

But the defense got its moments too. The alcohol in the Nissan. The broken beer bottles. The smell. The admission from Dillon Wall that he'd been drinking. The fact that a DUI specialist was sent to the hospital but couldn't complete an assessment.

Mac Pilgrim made sure the jury saw every photograph of every bottle. The Bud Light Lime six-pack torn apart in the back seat. The broken glass with the cap still attached. The Smirnoff Ice on the front passenger floorboard. The smell of alcohol permeating the vehicle.

He walked Driscoll through his experience with DUI investigations. The totality of circumstances. The elements that add up to probable cause. And then the pointed questions: With all this evidence of alcohol, why wasn't the driver of the Nissan charged with anything?

The jury is being asked to hold two things in their mind at once. Yes, A.J. Scott was speeding. Significantly speeding. Twenty-seven miles per hour over the limit. But also: there was alcohol in the other car. The driver of that car admitted to drinking. Maybe he pulled out in front of Scott. Maybe he failed to yield.

Does that matter? Georgia law says a driver making a left turn must yield to oncoming traffic. If Wall pulled into Scott's path without yielding, isn't that Wall's fault?

But here's the thing: Wall was supposed to yield to traffic traveling at legal speeds. He wasn't supposed to anticipate a patrol car doing 82 with no lights and no sirens. If Scott had been doing 55, maybe Wall would have had time to complete his turn. Maybe Scott would have seen him sooner. Maybe this whole thing doesn't happen.

That's the tension at the heart of this case. Speed versus judgment. A trooper who was definitely going too fast versus teenagers who may have made a mistake. Both things can be true. Both things probably are true.

But only one person is on trial.

The jury will have to decide whether Scott's speed was reckless. Whether that recklessness caused these deaths. Whether the alcohol in the Nissan, the possible failure to yield, creates enough doubt to acquit.

Twelve people who didn't know any of this before they walked into the courtroom. Now they're learning about drag factors and EDR data and the physics of high-speed collisions. They're seeing photographs of blood on pavement and broken beer bottles and the crushed remains of what used to be a Nissan Sentra.

And somewhere in the back of their minds, they're hearing Kylie Lindsey ask for her mom.

Why This Matters

My father spent his career defending people against the power of the state. He went to prison for refusing to violate attorney-client privilege. He was prosecuted a second time for teaching people their constitutional rights from a coffee shop.

He taught me that the rules have to apply to everyone. That's the whole point of due process. That's the whole point of equal protection. The law doesn't get to pick favorites.

This case tests that principle in the starkest terms. A.J. Scott wasn't just some guy driving 82 miles per hour through Carroll County. He was a Georgia State Patrol trooper. He was trained in emergency vehicle operations. He took courses specifically designed to teach officers when high-speed driving is appropriate and when it isn't.

Brandon Stone testified that he taught EVOC courses at the Georgia Public Safety Training Center. He explained what troopers learn: threshold braking, steering under pressure, how to handle a vehicle at high speeds when circumstances require it. The training emphasizes that speed reduces reaction time. That the laws of physics don't care about badges. That even in emergency situations, the risk of high-speed driving has to be weighed against the risk to public safety.

And when there's no emergency? When you're just driving to pick up a radio? There's no justification at all.

The evidence presented on Day 2 suggests Scott knew exactly what he was doing wrong. He wasn't responding to a dispatch call. He wasn't pursuing a suspect. He wasn't racing to an accident scene. He was just driving fast because he wanted to get somewhere. To pick up a radio. A dead radio battery.

That's what makes this case so maddening. It wasn't a split-second decision in the heat of a pursuit. It wasn't a judgment call during an emergency where every second counted. It was a choice. A deliberate choice to drive nearly 30 miles per hour over the speed limit for no reason other than personal convenience.

If a civilian had done this, would we even be having a trial? Would it have taken nearly a decade and three grand juries to get an indictment? Would the first trial have ended in a mistrial over undisclosed evidence?

I don't know the answers to those questions. Nobody does. But the questions themselves matter. They're what we should be thinking about as we watch this process unfold.

The first grand jury declined to indict. The second grand jury indicted, but a judge threw out that indictment. The third grand jury indicted again. The first trial ended in a mistrial when the prosecution failed to disclose evidence about a theory regarding victim seating position.

Nearly ten years. Two teenage girls dead. Two teenage boys with permanent brain injuries. And we're only now, finally, getting a trial that might actually reach a verdict.

The families of Kylie Lindsey and Isabella Chinchilla have been waiting since 2015. Every year, on the anniversary of the crash, on the anniversaries of the funerals, on the birthdays their daughters will never celebrate, they're reminded of what was taken from them. And of how long the system has made them wait for accountability.

That's why cases like this matter. Not because they prove the system is corrupt. Not because they prove cops always get away with it. But because they test whether the system can hold its own accountable when the evidence demands it.

The burden of proof is on the state. The prosecution has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Scott's driving was reckless, that it caused the deaths of Kylie Lindsey and Isabella Chinchilla, that it caused the injuries to Dillon Wall and Benjamin Finken.

Day 2 gave them strong evidence on the recklessness element. Eighty-two in a 55. No emergency. No lights. No sirens. Just a trooper in a hurry. Training that specifically taught him not to do what he did.

Under Georgia law, a person is reckless when they show a conscious disregard of a substantial and unjustifiable risk. The prosecution will argue that driving 82 mph in a 55 zone, at night, on wet roads, without emergency lights or sirens, while not responding to any call, constitutes exactly that kind of conscious disregard for the safety of others.

But causation is more complicated. The defense will argue that Wall caused this crash by failing to yield. That even if Scott was speeding, the collision wouldn't have happened if Wall had waited for him to pass. That you can't convict someone for someone else's mistake.

The prosecution will counter that you can't yield to a car you can't see coming. That a vehicle traveling 82 mph closes distance faster than a reasonable person would anticipate. That Scott's speed is what turned a routine left turn into a fatal collision. That the statutory duty to yield assumes traffic is traveling at legal speeds.

Think about it from Dillon Wall's perspective for a moment. He's sitting at that intersection, waiting to make a left turn. He looks south, sees headlights in the distance. How far away are they? How fast are they coming? Can he make it?

If those headlights belong to a car doing 55, he has time. If they belong to a car doing 82, he doesn't. But how is he supposed to know which one it is? There are no lights flashing. No sirens wailing. Nothing to indicate this is anything other than a normal car traveling at a normal speed.

He makes a judgment call. He starts his turn. And a patrol car he didn't know was coming that fast slams into the side of his car at 66 miles per hour.

Was that a failure to yield? Technically, maybe. Under Georgia law, a vehicle turning left must yield to oncoming traffic. But yield to what? To traffic traveling at legal speeds? Or to traffic traveling 27 miles per hour over the limit with no warning?

The jury will have to decide. And whatever they decide, the process will have worked. That's what my father believed. That's what I believe. The process isn't perfect. It's slow and messy and sometimes it gets things wrong. But it's what we have. It's what separates us from systems where outcomes are predetermined, where badges mean immunity, where power protects its own.

The question isn't whether A.J. Scott is a bad person. I don't know him. I can't judge his character. The question is whether his actions on September 26, 2015, constitute vehicular homicide under Georgia law. Whether his conscious decision to drive 82 miles per hour for no legitimate reason makes him criminally responsible for the deaths that resulted.

That's what trials are for. That's what juries are for. That's what the process is for.

The Bigger Picture

Day 1 set the stage with opening statements. The prosecution promised evidence of recklessness. The defense promised a story about failure to yield and alcohol.

Day 2 started delivering on both those promises.

The prosecution got first responders to humanize the victims. They got crash reconstructionists to establish Scott's speed. They got 82 miles per hour into the record, with methodology the defense didn't seriously challenge.

The defense got alcohol into the record. Broken beer bottles. The smell permeating the car. An admission from the driver. A DUI investigation that went nowhere. Questions about why the state patrol didn't pursue charges against Wall more aggressively.

Both sides are setting up their closing arguments. The prosecution will say: Look at the speed. Look at the training this trooper had. Look at the fact that he knew exactly what he was doing was dangerous. He chose to do it anyway, and two girls are dead because of that choice.

The defense will say: Look at the alcohol. Look at the fact that Wall admitted to drinking. Look at the left turn into oncoming traffic. Scott was speeding, yes, but Wall caused this crash by pulling out in front of him. You can't convict a man for someone else's fatal mistake.

This is classic criminal defense strategy. You don't have to prove your client is innocent. You just have to create reasonable doubt. And the alcohol in that Nissan, the DUI investigation that never went anywhere, the failure-to-yield argument, all of it is designed to plant seeds of doubt in the jury's mind.

What if Wall had been impaired? What if his judgment was compromised by alcohol? What if he misjudged the speed of Scott's car because his reflexes were slowed? Can you convict A.J. Scott beyond a reasonable doubt when there's another explanation for why this crash happened?

The prosecution has to anticipate these arguments and counter them. They'll point out that Wall was never charged with DUI despite a specialist being sent to investigate. They'll argue that the presence of alcohol in a car doesn't mean the driver was impaired. They'll note that the DUI task force trooper couldn't even get close enough to Wall to smell alcohol on him because of his medical condition.

And they'll keep coming back to the speed. Eighty-two miles per hour. Twenty-seven over the limit. On a wet road. At night. Without lights or sirens. Without any emergency. That's what this case is about. Not what was in the Nissan. What was in the patrol car. A trooper who made a choice.

If you're the prosecution, Day 2 went well. You got your speed evidence in. You got the jury to hear first responders describe the horror of that scene. You established the foundation for your recklessness case. You showed them the math: at 55, he stops in time. At 82, two girls die.

If you're the defense, Day 2 was about planting seeds. Alcohol. Failure to yield. Questions about the investigation. You're not trying to win the case today. You're trying to create enough doubt that when the jury goes to deliberate, they can't be certain Scott's speed was the cause of this crash.

If you're the families of Kylie Lindsey and Isabella Chinchilla, Day 2 was probably excruciating. Hearing first responders describe your daughter asking for her mom. Watching the defense try to shift blame to a teenager who was also a victim. Sitting in that courtroom while attorneys argue about who's responsible for destroying your family.

The judge had to address threats made between attendees during a recess. That tells you something about the temperature in that room. Nearly ten years of grief and frustration boiling just beneath the surface. Families who've been waiting since 2015 for something that feels like justice.

If you're A.J. Scott, Day 2 was the prosecution's case starting to take shape. The number 82 is now in the jury's mind. Your patrol car betrayed you. The machine that was supposed to protect you recorded exactly how fast you were going, and that data is now evidence against you.

Scott rejected a plea deal at some point during these years of proceedings. Reportedly, he was offered 15 years with 8 to serve. He said no. Whether that was confidence in his innocence, faith in his defense strategy, or something else, we can't know. But that decision brought him here, to this courtroom, facing a jury that just heard he was doing 82 in a 55 when he killed two teenage girls.

The weight differential came up in testimony too. Chad Barrow pulled the vehicle specifications for both cars. The Nissan Sentra had a curb weight of 2,638 pounds. Scott's Dodge Charger patrol car, with the police package, weighed 4,281 pounds.

That's not a fair fight. A vehicle that weighs 60% more, traveling 66 miles per hour at impact, is going to dominate that collision. The lighter car gets crushed. The heavier car keeps going. The physics favor the patrol vehicle every time.

Kylie Lindsey was ejected from the vehicle. Isabella Chinchilla was still in the back seat when investigators arrived, deceased. Dillon Wall and Benjamin Finken survived with traumatic brain injuries.

Four teenagers in a 2,638-pound Nissan. One trooper in a 4,281-pound Charger. Speed: 82 miles per hour versus approximately 12 miles per hour. The outcome was inevitable from the moment of impact.

What to Watch For

Day 3 will likely continue the prosecution's case. More technical testimony. More foundation-building. The state has to prove every element of every charge, and they're methodically doing exactly that.

Watch for how the defense handles the speed evidence. They didn't seriously challenge Brandon Stone's methodology. They didn't argue that 82 mph was wrong. That suggests they're conceding the speed and focusing on causation. Scott was speeding, yes, but that's not what killed those girls. Wall's failure to yield is what killed those girls.

This is a strategic choice. Fighting the speed number would be a losing battle. The EDR data exists. The video analysis is sound. The math is the math. Better to say "yes, he was speeding, but..." than to waste credibility arguing against objective evidence.

Watch for more about the DUI investigation. The defense clearly wants to make this an issue. Why wasn't Wall charged? Why couldn't the DUI specialist complete his assessment? Was there a decision made to protect the state patrol by not pursuing alcohol as a factor?

Sergeant Barrow testified that Trooper Parker, the Nighthawks DUI specialist, couldn't get close enough to Wall to detect any alcohol. Wall was hooked up to medical equipment. His injuries were severe. But the defense will keep hammering at this. Why didn't they get a warrant? Why didn't they draw blood? Why did the investigation just stop?

Watch for the dashcam video. We heard testimony about it on Day 2. We know it exists. We know it shows the moments before impact. At some point, the prosecution is going to play it for the jury. That will be a powerful moment. Seeing what A.J. Scott saw in the seconds before he killed two teenage girls.

The video ends at impact. It's difficult to watch, according to those who've seen it. It shows Scott's view of the road, the headlights of the approaching Nissan, the moment of collision. The jury will see what he saw. They'll have to reconcile that view with the 82 mph reading from the EDR.

Watch for the defense to humanize Scott. So far, we've heard a lot about the victims and the first responders. We haven't heard much about the defendant as a person. At some point, probably during the defense case, we'll hear about his military service in the Marine Corps, including deployment to Fallujah. His career with the state patrol. His current position as mayor of Buchanan, Georgia. The person behind the badge who made a terrible decision.

Humanizing the defendant is standard defense strategy, but it's particularly important in a case like this. The prosecution has given the jury victims to care about. The defense needs to give them a defendant to care about too. Not because sympathy is a legal defense, but because juries are human. They're more likely to find reasonable doubt when they can see the defendant as a person, not a monster.

Watch for the weight differential to come up again. A 4,281-pound patrol car versus a 2,638-pound Nissan. That's a significant difference. The heavier vehicle, traveling at higher speed, is going to dominate that collision. The physics favor Scott's car, and the physics killed those girls.

The prosecution may use this to emphasize the recklessness. Scott knew he was driving a heavy vehicle. He was trained in how to operate it. He knew that at high speeds, his patrol car was a weapon. He drove it at 82 mph anyway.

And watch for the closing arguments when they come. Both sides are building toward that moment. Every witness, every exhibit, every question is designed to support the story each attorney will tell the jury at the end. The prosecution's story is about choice and consequence. The defense's story is about tragedy and doubt.

We're watching the system work. Slowly, methodically, imperfectly. But work.