The foreperson stood up. Twelve strangers who had spent the past week watching body camera footage, listening to accident reconstruction experts, and hearing two very different stories about what happened on Highway 27 that rainy September night were about to speak.
Judge Erica Tisinger had already warned the packed courtroom. No outbursts. No reactions. The bailiffs had their instructions. Anyone who couldn't contain themselves would be escorted out. This wasn't an unusual instruction in a criminal trial, but everyone in that room knew why it was necessary today.
This case had torn through a community for nearly a decade. It had pitted families against a system that seemed determined to protect one of its own. It had generated protests outside courthouses and headlines across Georgia. And now, finally, it was coming to an end.
Kellie Lindsey sat somewhere in that gallery. She had been coming to this courthouse for nearly a decade. She buried her daughter Kylie three days after a Georgia State Patrol cruiser slammed into the car carrying four teenagers through an intersection near Bremen. That was September 2015. Now it was 2025, and she was finally about to hear a jury's verdict.
Ten years. Think about that. Ten years of waking up every morning and remembering that your daughter is gone. Ten years of watching the man who killed her walk free. Ten years of seeing him not just avoid consequences, but thrive. Win elections. Become mayor. Live his life while Kylie's room sat exactly as she left it.
Kellie has talked publicly about what these years have been like. "I didn't ever plan for it to be this long," she told reporters. "And it has been horrific."
Horrific. That's the word a grieving mother uses to describe the ten years she spent fighting for accountability. Ten years of court dates that led nowhere. Ten years of procedural delays and legal maneuvering. Ten years of a system that seemed designed to run out the clock.
Leslie Woods was there too. Her daughter Isabella, Kylie's best friend, died at that same scene. Sixteen years old. Gone in an instant when a trooper driving 90 miles per hour without lights or sirens collided with their Nissan Sentra.
Leslie has talked about what it's like to walk past Isabella's bedroom, which remains exactly as her daughter left it. The posters on the walls. The clothes in the closet. The life that stopped at sixteen and never got to become what it might have been.
"She had goals, she had dreams," Leslie said in court, directing her words at Scott. "You took it away."
The two mothers, Kellie and Leslie, have become close over the years. United by the worst kind of shared experience. United by the fight for accountability that consumed both their lives. They've been in courtrooms together, at protests together, facing the cameras together. Always together. Because when your daughters were best friends and they died in the same crash, you don't go through that alone.
And A.J. Scott sat at the defense table. The former trooper. The man who got elected to Buchanan City Council six weeks after the crash. Not six months. Not a year later. Six weeks. The families were still burying their daughters, and Scott was winning an election.
He became mayor while his trial was delayed year after year. Think about what that means. A man charged with killing two teenage girls was running a city. Representing constituents. Making decisions about public safety. The same man who drove 90 miles per hour through an intersection without responding to any emergency call.
He rejected a plea deal that would have given him 15 years with 8 to serve. The prosecution offered him a way to accept responsibility, serve his time, and move on. He said no. He believed he could convince a jury that this wasn't his fault.
He chose to take his chances with a jury. Now he was about to find out if that was a mistake.
"Count one, serious injury by vehicle," the foreperson read. "We the jury find the defendant guilty."
That was for Dillon Wall. The driver of the Nissan. The 18-year-old who suffered bilateral skull fractures and traumatic brain injury. The kid who woke up in a hospital not remembering the crash that killed two of his friends.
"Count two, serious injury by vehicle. We the jury find the defendant guilty."
That was for Benjamin Finken. Another teenager in that car. Another fractured skull. Another young man whose life was forever altered by what happened at that intersection.
"Count three, homicide by vehicle in the second degree. We the jury find the defendant guilty."
Guilty. For one of the deaths. One of the two teenage girls who never made it home that night.
"Count four, homicide by vehicle in the second degree."
The courtroom held its breath.
"We the jury find the defendant not guilty."
Not guilty. On one of the two homicide counts. Same crash. Same speed. Same recklessness. Two girls died, and the jury convicted on one death but acquitted on another.
We'll get to what that means. We'll get to the legal analysis and the constitutional questions and the bigger picture. But first, I need you to understand what happened in that courtroom over the hours before this verdict was read. Because the closing arguments in this case tell you everything about how both sides saw this tragedy, and why 12 jurors reached the conclusion they did.
This wasn't just a trial about speed. It was a trial about responsibility. About who bears the weight when two cars collide and people die. About what it means to drive with reckless disregard for human life.
The prosecution said A.J. Scott was doing 90 miles per hour in the dark, in the rain, with no emergency lights, no siren, not responding to any call. They said speed kills. They said this was foreseeable. They said the defendant chose to drive that way, and two girls paid with their lives.
The defense said this was a two-car collision. They said Dillon Wall failed to yield. They said the teenagers had alcohol in their car. They said A.J. Scott tried to avoid the crash, that he steered right, that he hit his brakes, that he did everything a reasonable driver would do when someone pulls out in front of you.
Both sides got their chance to make their case. And then the jury decided.
But they didn't decide the way either side expected.
Five guilty verdicts. One acquittal. A.J. Scott, the former state trooper who spent nearly a decade as an elected official while awaiting trial for killing two teenage girls, was finally held accountable. Partially. For some of what happened that night.
The families got something. After ten years, three prosecutors, two mistrials, and a legal battle that seemed like it would never end, they got guilty verdicts. But they didn't get everything. One of those homicide counts came back not guilty, and nobody in that courtroom could say exactly why.
That's the thing about juries. They deliberate in private. They don't have to explain their reasoning. They just have to reach a unanimous decision on each count. And sometimes, that decision doesn't make logical sense from the outside.
Same crash. Same speed. Same conduct. Two deaths. Guilty on one, not guilty on the other.
I've been covering trials for years. I've seen split verdicts before. But this one stopped me cold. Because either A.J. Scott's driving was the proximate cause of both deaths, or it wasn't the proximate cause of either. How do you convict on one and acquit on the other?
The answer, I think, lies in the closing arguments. In the stories each side told. And in one particular theory the defense presented that might have created just enough doubt about one victim's death to change the outcome.
Let me walk you through what happened.
The morning of Day 5 started with something the jury never saw: a charge conference. This is where the judge and the attorneys hammer out exactly what instructions the jury will receive before deliberations. It's technical, it's tedious, and it's incredibly important.
Most people don't realize how much of a trial happens outside the jury's presence. The legal arguments, the evidentiary disputes, the battles over jury instructions. All of that shapes what the jury sees and hears, but the jury never knows it's happening.
In this case, the charge conference was particularly significant because it determined what theories the defense could present to the jury, and what legal framework the jury would use to evaluate those theories.
Defense attorney Mac Pilgrim had been pushing for an "intervening act" instruction. He wanted the judge to tell the jury that if Dillon Wall's failure to yield was an intervening act that broke the chain of causation, they could find Scott not responsible for the deaths and injuries.
This is a critical concept in criminal law. Proximate cause isn't just about whether the defendant's conduct led to the harm. It's about whether something else happened in between that broke the causal chain. If I push you, and you fall down, and then a third person stabs you while you're on the ground, my push wasn't the proximate cause of your stab wound. The stabbing was an intervening act.
Pilgrim was arguing that Wall's left turn was like that stabbing. An independent act that broke the chain between Scott's speeding and the deaths. If the jury accepted that theory, they could acquit Scott entirely.
Judge Tisinger wasn't having it.
She explained her reasoning carefully. The legal standard for intervening acts asks whether the intervening act was itself a natural and probable consequence of the defendant's conduct. A car making a left turn at an intersection? That's not something that "ensued in the ordinary course of events" from Scott driving 90 miles per hour. That's just normal traffic.
The defense could still argue that Wall's turn caused the collision. They just wouldn't get a specific jury instruction on intervening acts. It was a significant blow to Scott's case before the jury even heard closing arguments.
She also denied the defense request for an "accident" instruction. Under Georgia law, accident is an intent defense, and it only applies when there's evidence the defendant didn't voluntarily commit the prohibited act. Scott voluntarily got in his car. He voluntarily drove 90 miles per hour. No accident instruction.
By the time the jury was brought in for closing arguments, the legal playing field had been set. The prosecution would argue proximate cause. The defense would argue the other driver was responsible. And the jury would have to decide who bore the weight of this tragedy.
Senior ADA Heather Waters stood before the jury first. The state gets to open and close in Georgia, which means the prosecution speaks first, then the defense, then the prosecution gets a rebuttal. It's a significant advantage.
Waters thanked the jury for their service. She acknowledged the time they'd spent away from their families and jobs. And then she got to work.
"You've heard all the facts. You've seen all the evidence. Now we're going to talk about the law."
She walked them through speeding. A person shall drive at a speed that is reasonable and careful under conditions. Having regard for actual and potential hazards. Intersection ahead. Hill crest. Rain. Darkness. Speed limit 55.
She walked them through reckless driving. Driving any vehicle in reckless disregard for the safety of persons and property. And she defined what reckless disregard actually means: a disregard of the consequences, a heedless indifference for the safety of others who might reasonably be expected to be injured.
"We've all been on the roadways before," she told the jury. "You've said to someone in the car with you, 'Oh my gosh, that person is driving crazy. They're going to kill someone.' You know what that looks like. And if it happened, you wouldn't be surprised."
That's reckless disregard. That's what the state was asking the jury to find.
Then she got to the heart of the case: proximate cause. The criminal conduct must have played a substantial part in bringing about or actually causing the injury or death. The evidence must show that the injury or death happened in a way that was reasonably foreseeable.
"90 mph in the dark in the rain," Waters said. "Is it reasonably foreseeable that there would be other cars on the road? That someone might be at that intersection up ahead? 100 percent."
She used a puzzle analogy for reasonable doubt. You're putting together a puzzle. You've got all the edges. You're filling in the middle. Maybe some pieces are missing. It's not done. But you can look at it and say, "That's going to be a tiger." You haven't built everything, but you know what you're looking at.
"Someone may come along and want you to believe it's a lighthouse," Waters said. "But it's not. You know what you're looking at."
The message was clear: don't let the defense confuse you with alternative theories. The picture is clear. A.J. Scott was driving 90 miles per hour through an intersection in the rain at night without emergency lights. Two girls are dead. That's the tiger.
Then it was the defense's turn.
Mac Pilgrim approached the jury with a different energy. He thanked them too, but he also reminded them of their constitutional role. This wasn't just jury service. This was the cornerstone of American democracy. People like them, not the police, not the judges, not the prosecutors, deciding what justice looks like.
And then he did something I've rarely seen in a closing argument. He asked the jurors to put their hands over their eyes.
"Take your hand, place it over your right eye, and look," he said. "You can see really well to your left. Take your hand down, put it over your left eye. Can't really see over here, can you?"
His point was that the state wanted them to look at this case with one eye. Focus only on Scott's speed. Ignore everything else. But Pilgrim was asking them to open both eyes. To see the full picture. To consider that this was a two-car collision, and both drivers made decisions that night.
"We're not here because of speeding," Pilgrim argued. "We're not here because of reckless driving. We're here because there was a collision. And this was a two-car collision."
He went through the indictment, pointing out that every accusation against Scott could also apply to Dillon Wall. Driving at night? Both of them. Over a hill? Both of them. Disregard for the speed limit? Scott was speeding, sure. But Wall had a disregard for yielding. Why wasn't the jury being asked to consider that?
Pilgrim reminded the jury about the alcohol at the scene. Beer bottles in the car. Birthday cake vodka. He acknowledged that there was no evidence Dillon Wall was legally intoxicated, but he planted the seed. Why was alcohol there? What were those teenagers doing that night?
Then he got to the technical evidence. The EDR data, the event data recorder from Scott's patrol car. At 1.9 seconds before impact, Scott was at 52% accelerator. At 1.8 seconds, the accelerator goes to zero. He took his foot off the gas. The RPMs dropped. The steering wheel moved. At 1.6 seconds, braking came on.
"What does that tell us?" Pilgrim asked. "He had regard. He had his head up. He was paying attention. His speed's not the only issue."
Compare that to the Nissan, Pilgrim argued. Wall's car never got off the gas. Never hit the brake. Never made an evasive maneuver. It made a left turn at 22 miles per hour and never let up.
"But the state wants you to believe my client was reckless," Pilgrim said. "That he had reckless disregard. The evidence tells us something different."
He brought in testimony from the medical examiner, Dr. Laura Garsol, who had performed over 7,000 autopsies. She ruled both deaths as accidents. That was the manner of death. Accidents. A medical expert, nobody disagreed with her, no evidence to refute her.
And then Pilgrim unveiled his most controversial theory. The front seat theory.
He had brought a baseball to the courtroom. A Major League baseball he'd caught at a spring training game. He talked about how when a baseball hits you, you can literally count the stitches. The imprint is clear.
Then he showed the jury autopsy photos. The airbag stitching pattern on Kylie Lindsey's body. A circular pattern with double stitching. He compared it to the unique side airbag in the Nissan's front passenger area, not the pillow-type airbag on the driver's side.
The injury was on her lower left breast, middle of her torso. Not her face, where a front passenger airbag would typically hit. Pilgrim argued this meant Kylie was in an elevated position in the front seat area. Maybe sitting on someone's lap. Maybe between the seats.
Why did this matter? Because if Kylie was blocking Dillon Wall's view, he might not have been able to see Scott's headlights approaching. That would explain why Wall asked his passenger, Benjamin Finken, "Do you see lights? You seeing lights?" He couldn't see because there was a body between him and the oncoming car.
It was a theory without direct evidence. No witness testified that Kylie was in the front seat. The investigation placed her in the back. But Pilgrim was planting doubt. If there was any chance Kylie's position contributed to the collision, maybe Scott wasn't fully responsible for her death.
He also hit the state's expert witness, William Partheimer, hard. Partheimer was a paid expert, a private consultant. He didn't come to the scene. Didn't examine the vehicles. Didn't download the data. Didn't mark evidence. He was brought in for one purpose: to discount what the Georgia State Patrol investigators found.
"Who has more weight?" Pilgrim asked. "The troopers who were there, who did the work, who gathered the evidence? Or a paid expert who came in later and picked and chose what he wanted to use?"
Then Pilgrim played the drone footage. Video taken days after the crash showing the same intersection in daylight. He had the jury watch as car after car approached the intersection from Holly Springs Road and waited. One car waited three seconds before turning left in front of traffic. Another waited four seconds. Another three. They all yielded.
"You know what that driver did in nature?" Pilgrim said. "He yielded. In the daytime, not in the rain, not on a hill crest. He yielded. You know what didn't happen? There wasn't an accident. Because the speed of those drivers didn't matter. What mattered was yielding."
He played the enhanced dashcam video, frame by frame. Showing the moment Scott first saw the Nissan's headlights. Showing Scott's car moving right, trying to avoid the collision. Showing the Nissan continuing its left turn, never stopping, never yielding, never giving Scott anywhere to go.
"At this point in time," Pilgrim said, pointing to a frozen frame, "the state of Georgia wants you to believe that my client knew this car was going to make a left, would not yield, would not stop. That's the probability they want you to believe."
But Scott had seen cars at that intersection all night. None of them had pulled out in front of him. He believed this one would stop too. That's what reasonable drivers do. They yield.
Pilgrim wrapped up by distinguishing between authority and duty. The judge would tell them they have the authority to convict. But they have a duty to acquit if the state hasn't met its burden. Authority is permission. Duty is obligation.
"If the state has not met their burden on each and every element of every count in the indictment, they've not met their duty," Pilgrim said. "And I think it's clear in this case that there is reasonable doubt from the beginning to the end."
He paused. He looked at the jury.
"This was an accident. It was a two-car accident. Therefore, both drivers made decisions. Therefore, the weight, the consequence of this collision does not fall solely on him."
He thanked the jury again. He told them he looked forward to hearing their verdict of not guilty. And he sat down.
But the state wasn't done. They had rebuttal.
ADA Waters came back with fire. She went straight at the defense's alcohol argument.
"The defense has spent a lot of time trying to convince you about alcohol," she said. "But this is the state of Georgia versus Anthony James Scott. This is not a DUI case. There is actually no evidence that Dylan had been drinking."
She acknowledged there was alcohol in the car. Underage drinking, sure, that's wrong. But the officers at the scene, including the DUI task force specialist, found no probable cause to believe Wall was impaired. They never got a warrant for his blood because they didn't have a legal basis to get one.
The hospital records showed Wall's blood alcohol level as "less than 10 milligrams per deciliter." In DUI terms, that's at most 0.01, essentially nothing. Waters pointed out that if she took anyone's blood right now, their results would look exactly like that.
"Contrary to what the defense will tell you, this is a case about speed," Waters said. "Because speed reduces your choices. Speed reduces your options. And ultimately, speed kills."
She played the original dashcam video. Not the enhanced, brightened, slowed-down version the defense had shown. The real-time version. The version that showed what it actually looked like that night.
"Nobody got to see it brightened up," Waters said. "Nobody got to make decisions based on frame by frame. This is what it actually looked like."
The video played. Dark. Rainy. Headlights approaching and then, impact. It happened in seconds.
"That's the amount of time that people had to make choices," Waters said.
She walked through the EDR data one more time. Five seconds before impact: 90 miles per hour. Two seconds before: 83 miles per hour. Impact: 66 miles per hour.
Even with braking, even with evasive maneuvering, Scott was still doing 66 miles per hour when he hit that Nissan. The speed limit was 55. He was exceeding it at the moment of impact.
Waters finished with a simple question: "Speed limit is 55. There's a hill crest. There's an intersection. There are special hazards. Is it reasonably foreseeable that driving 90 miles per hour in those conditions could result in death?"
The prosecution rested.
Judge Tisinger then delivered the jury charge. Nearly 45 minutes of legal instructions covering everything from the presumption of innocence to the burden of proof to the specific elements of each charge.
She explained that reckless driving is a strict liability offense. The state doesn't have to prove Scott intended to drive recklessly. They just have to prove he voluntarily drove his vehicle while the surrounding circumstances rendered his driving reckless.
She explained proximate cause. The criminal conduct must play a substantial part in bringing about or actually causing the death. The death must be reasonably foreseeable. It must happen as a direct result of the criminal conduct or as a natural and probable consequence.
She explained that the defendant is presumed innocent. The burden never shifts. The state must prove every element beyond a reasonable doubt. If the jurors' minds are wavering, unsettled, or unsatisfied, they must acquit.
And then she sent them to deliberate.
It was 12:36 PM when the jury left the courtroom. The judge offered them the option to take a lunch break. They decided to go straight into deliberations.
That decision tells you something about this jury. They didn't want to delay. They didn't need time to decompress after the closing arguments. They wanted to get to work. After five days of testimony and evidence, they were ready to decide.
For the next several hours, 12 strangers sat in a room and decided A.J. Scott's fate. We don't know what they said. We don't know what arguments swayed them. We don't know how they worked through the evidence. We don't know if there were disagreements, if anyone held out, if the deliberations were heated or methodical.
Jury deliberations are one of the last truly private spaces in our legal system. No cameras. No recordings. No transcripts. Just 12 citizens, their consciences, and the instructions from the judge.
What we do know is that at some point, they sent a note to the judge. They wanted to see two pieces of evidence: the original dashcam video from Scott's patrol car, and Officer Lambert's body camera footage from the scene.
This is significant. Out of all the evidence presented, out of all the expert testimony and accident reconstruction and medical records, the jury wanted to see those two videos again. They wanted to see the crash itself. And they wanted to see the immediate aftermath.
The jury was brought back into the courtroom. The lights went down. And they watched the dashcam video again. The approach. The headlights. The impact.
Then they watched Officer Lambert's body camera. The immediate aftermath. Lambert arriving at the scene. The chaos. The injured teenagers. The smoking vehicles. Someone asking, "Is the trooper okay?"
You could hear it on the body camera. Lambert calling out what he was seeing. "Two possibly under 20. Female bleeding severely and two more in the car." Then, "We got four patients. They're all injured."
And in the background, the desperate voice of someone asking about the trooper. Asking if Scott was okay. While two teenage girls lay dying.
The jury watched both videos. They didn't need to see them again. They went back to deliberations.
And then, the word came. The jury had reached a verdict.
We've already been through what that verdict was. Guilty on five counts. Not guilty on one.
Every juror was polled. Judge Tisinger asked each one individually: Was that your verdict in the jury room? Was it freely and voluntarily made? Is it still your verdict?
Twelve times, the answer was yes.
The verdict was unanimous. On all six counts, all 12 jurors agreed. Five guilty. One not guilty.
And then it was over. Judge Tisinger thanked the jury for their service. She reminded them they were now free to talk to anyone about the case if they wished, though no one was allowed to approach them that day. Bailiffs escorted them to their cars.
Sentencing was postponed. The defense requested a pre-sentence hearing. A date would be set within 30 days.
A.J. Scott, the former state trooper who became the mayor of Buchanan while awaiting trial, was now a convicted felon. Guilty of two counts of serious injury by vehicle, one count of homicide by vehicle in the second degree, speeding, and reckless driving.
But he was acquitted of one homicide count. And that acquittal is the puzzle at the heart of this verdict.
Let me tell you what I think happened in that jury room. I can't know for certain because I wasn't there. But after watching every minute of this trial, after listening to both closing arguments, after seeing the evidence the jury requested, I have a theory.
The jury saw the dashcam video twice. They watched it during the trial. They requested to watch it again during deliberations. That video mattered to them. It was central to their decision-making.
Why? Because the dashcam video is the closest thing we have to objective truth in this case. It's not filtered through expert interpretation. It's not shaped by advocacy. It's just what the camera recorded in those final seconds before impact.
What does the dashcam show? It shows a dark road. Rain on the windshield. The headlights illuminating just a portion of what's ahead. It shows other cars on the road, cars that yielded, cars that didn't pull out in front of the speeding patrol car. And then it shows headlights approaching. A car making a left turn into Scott's path. And impact.
It happens fast. Terrifyingly fast. The kind of fast that makes you understand why Scott's EDR data showed he only had 1.9 seconds to react before the collision. The kind of fast that makes you wonder if anyone could have avoided what happened.
But here's the thing: Scott put himself in that position. He chose to drive 90 miles per hour on a rainy night. He chose not to activate his emergency lights. He chose not to respond to any call. He created the conditions where 1.9 seconds wasn't enough time.
What the dashcam doesn't show clearly is who was where in the Nissan. You can't see the passengers. You can't see their positions. You can't verify or disprove the defense's theory that Kylie Lindsey was in the front seat, potentially blocking Dillon Wall's view.
Now, the defense never proved that theory. They just raised it. They showed autopsy photos with airbag stitching patterns. They brought up the medical examiner's testimony about the location of injuries on Kylie's body. They argued it made sense that Wall would ask his passenger if he could see lights. They planted a seed of doubt.
I want to be clear about something. The front seat theory wasn't supported by eyewitness testimony. The surviving passengers consistently said Kylie was in the back seat. The investigation placed her in the back. The defense had circumstantial evidence at best, speculation at worst.
But speculation can create reasonable doubt. That's one of the uncomfortable realities of our legal system. The prosecution has to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. The defense only has to create doubt. And sometimes, a theory without proof is enough to do that.
And that seed may have taken root with at least some jurors when it came to one of the homicide counts.
Here's the thing about proximate cause. The criminal conduct has to play a "substantial part" in causing the death. If the jury believed, or couldn't rule out, that Kylie's position in the car somehow contributed to the collision, maybe they felt Scott's conduct wasn't the sole substantial cause of her death specifically.
That would explain the split verdict. Same crash, same speed, same conduct, but different victims. One death clearly caused by Scott's recklessness. One death where there might, possibly, be some intervening factor that complicated the causation.
I want to be clear: I don't think this is the right outcome. If Scott's driving was reckless enough to cause one death, it was reckless enough to cause both. The girls were in the same car. They died from the same collision. The idea that Scott is criminally responsible for one death but not the other defies logic.
But juries don't always follow logic. They follow instructions. And the instructions said they had to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Scott's conduct was the proximate cause of each death. If the defense created reasonable doubt about Kylie's death specifically through that front seat theory, that might be enough for an acquittal on that count.
The jury also watched Officer Lambert's body camera. That footage is devastating. It's the immediate aftermath of the crash. It's teenagers bleeding and unconscious. It's first responders trying to save lives.
And it's a question that echoed through the chaos: "Is the trooper okay?"
I think the jury needed to see that footage to understand what really happened that night. Not the technical data, not the enhanced videos, not the expert testimony. The human reality. The bodies. The blood. The lives destroyed in an instant.
After watching that, they convicted on five counts. They held A.J. Scott accountable for his conduct. They just couldn't agree, or couldn't be certain, that his conduct caused both deaths.
It's an unsatisfying resolution. For the families, it must be agonizing. One daughter's death resulted in a conviction. The other didn't. How do you make peace with that?
This case has always been about more than A.J. Scott. It's about what happens when law enforcement officers become defendants. It's about accountability and the system's willingness, or reluctance, to hold its own accountable.
My father understood this dynamic better than most. Steven M. Askin spent 23 years as a criminal defense attorney in West Virginia. He defended people the system wanted to destroy. He stood up for constitutional rights when it was unpopular to do so. And in 1994, the system came for him.
He was held in contempt for refusing to testify against his own clients. Federal investigators had obtained information through surveillance he believed violated the Fourth Amendment. The conversations they wanted him to testify about were protected by attorney-client privilege. He refused to break that privilege. He went to prison for seven months.
Later, he was prosecuted again. For helping people understand their rights from a coffee shop. For teaching people the law. For doing exactly what I'm doing now: making the legal system accessible to people who aren't lawyers.
The prosecutor who opposed his reinstatement to the bar said she feared he would "disrupt the legal system" by training young lawyers the way he practiced. By insisting on constitutional protections. By demanding due process. By protecting the presumption of innocence.
That's what accountability looks like when you challenge power. And that's why cases like Georgia v. A.J. Scott matter so much.
Think about the timeline. September 2015: Scott kills two teenagers. October 2015: Georgia State Patrol fires him after determining he was driving 91 mph while not responding to an emergency. November 2015: Scott gets elected to Buchanan City Council, six weeks after the crash.
Six weeks. The bodies were barely in the ground, and Scott was already rebuilding his public life. Already positioning himself as a victim of circumstance rather than a perpetrator of recklessness.
February 2016: The first grand jury declines to indict. No charges. No trial. No accountability. The families were told that what happened to their daughters wasn't a crime. Sixty people protested outside the Carroll County Courthouse, demanding justice.
November 2016: A second grand jury finally indicts Scott, but only on misdemeanor charges. Speeding. Reckless driving. For killing two teenage girls and seriously injuring two others. Misdemeanors. The kind of charges you get for running a red light.
Those charges were later dismissed on statute of limitations grounds. The system's delays had run out the clock on the misdemeanors. Scott walked free again.
December 2018: A third grand jury indicts on felony charges. Finally. More than three years after the crash. Serious charges that could mean real prison time.
May 2019: The first trial ends in a mistrial due to a Brady violation. Prosecutors failed to disclose evidence to the defense. The very front seat theory that might have created reasonable doubt in this trial came from evidence the prosecution had but didn't share.
Then COVID hit. More delays. Years passed. Scott kept serving as mayor. Kept living his life. Kept waiting for a trial that seemed like it would never come.
2025: Finally, a verdict.
Ten years. Three grand juries. Two mistrials. One plea deal rejected. And in the end, a split verdict that satisfied no one completely.
This is what accountability looks like when the defendant used to wear a badge. It's slow. It's complicated. It requires extraordinary persistence from the families who refuse to let the system forget. And even when you get to a verdict, it's never quite what you hoped for.
My father spent his career fighting systems that protected their own. He was twice prosecuted for standing on principle. He knew better than anyone how the machinery of justice can be weaponized against those who challenge it.
He also knew that sometimes, despite everything, justice prevails. Imperfectly. Incompletely. But justice nonetheless.
A.J. Scott will be sentenced. He faces real consequences. The charges he was convicted of carry potential prison time. The felony serious injury counts are the most significant. The misdemeanor homicide and traffic violations add to the total.
He'll have to stand before Judge Tisinger and hear what his punishment will be. He'll have to face Kellie Lindsey and Leslie Woods, who have been waiting ten years for this moment. He'll have to account for what he did that night on Highway 27.
That's something. After a decade, that's something.
When this trial began, I talked about what it means when the system is forced to judge its own. We've seen that play out over five days of testimony, closing arguments, and deliberations.
The prosecution had to prove that a former state trooper, a Marine veteran, a man who was elected mayor while awaiting trial, was criminally responsible for killing two teenage girls. They had to overcome the natural deference jurors might give to law enforcement. They had to establish that wearing a badge doesn't exempt you from the consequences of reckless conduct.
This is harder than it sounds. Studies show that jurors often give law enforcement officers the benefit of the doubt. They trust police testimony more than civilian testimony. They're more likely to believe an officer's version of events. And they're sometimes reluctant to convict someone who spent their career protecting the community.
The prosecution had to break through that deference. They had to make the jury see Scott not as a trooper who made a tragic mistake, but as a driver who chose to endanger lives through reckless conduct.
And they did. On five of six counts, they did.
The defense argued that this was just an accident. A tragic, terrible accident where both drivers made mistakes. They tried to shift blame to the teenagers. They emphasized the alcohol in the car. They raised questions about where Kylie was sitting. They pointed to Wall's failure to yield. They argued that Scott did everything he could to avoid the collision.
They did everything defense attorneys are supposed to do: create reasonable doubt. Attack the prosecution's theory. Humanize their client. Give the jury a reason to acquit.
And on one count, they succeeded.
What we're left with is a verdict that reflects the complexity of the case. It's not a complete victory for the prosecution. They didn't get guilty verdicts on all counts. One of those girls died, and the jury said Scott wasn't criminally responsible for her death.
It's not an exoneration for the defense. Scott was convicted of five felonies and misdemeanors. He'll be sentenced as a convicted criminal. His career in public service is over. His reputation is destroyed.
It's a jury doing its best to apply the law to difficult facts. Twelve ordinary people trying to make sense of a tragedy that has no good answers.
The families got accountability. Partial accountability. Scott will be sentenced as a convicted felon. He'll carry that for the rest of his life. But one of those deaths didn't result in a conviction, and there's no way to undo that.
This is the reality of our criminal justice system. Verdicts are rarely clean. Justice is rarely complete. The families who come to court seeking closure often leave with more questions than answers.
Isabella Chinchilla was 16 years old. Kylie Lindsey was 17. Best friends since childhood. They got in a car with two boys on a Saturday night, probably to go get food at a local restaurant. A normal thing for teenagers to do. A Saturday night like a thousand Saturday nights before.
They never came home.
A.J. Scott was 30 years old. A state trooper. A veteran. He was driving 90 miles per hour through an intersection without emergency lights, without responding to a call. He survived the crash with minor injuries. The teenagers suffered fractured skulls, traumatic brain injuries, and death.
The question this trial asked was simple: Is Scott criminally responsible for what happened?
The jury's answer was: Mostly.
Not entirely. Not for everything. But mostly.
That's the truth this trial revealed. And it's the truth the families have to live with going forward.
The sentencing hearing is next. That's when we'll learn what consequences A.J. Scott actually faces. That's when the legal abstractions become concrete. That's when the numbers on a sentencing chart become years in a prison cell.
The felony serious injury by vehicle charges each carry up to 15 years in prison. That's the heavy hammer in this case. Two counts means a potential maximum of 30 years on those charges alone. Those are the charges related to Dillon Wall and Benjamin Finken, the two survivors who suffered traumatic brain injuries.
The misdemeanor homicide by vehicle in the second degree carries up to 1 year. That's the charge for the death the jury held Scott responsible for. One year maximum for taking a human life. It sounds absurd when you say it out loud, but that's the law. Second-degree homicide by vehicle is a misdemeanor in Georgia.
Speeding and reckless driving are also misdemeanors. Additional time, but not much in the grand scheme.
What will Judge Tisinger actually impose? That's the question everyone is waiting to answer.
The defense requested a pre-sentence hearing, which means they want to present evidence and arguments about what the appropriate sentence should be. This is their last chance to advocate for their client. Their last chance to humanize Scott before the judge decides his fate.
They might bring character witnesses. People who knew Scott as a Marine. People who served with him in Iraq. People who worked with him at the Georgia State Patrol. People who elected him to public office. They'll talk about the good Scott has done in his life. The service he's rendered. The person he is beyond this one tragic night.
They might emphasize his military service and law enforcement career. They might argue that Scott has already suffered. His career is destroyed. His reputation is in ruins. His marriage may have been affected. The decade of waiting for trial was its own punishment.
They might argue for leniency based on his contributions to the community. They might point to his lack of prior criminal history. They might argue that prison won't bring Kylie back, won't undo the brain injuries, won't heal what's been broken.
The prosecution will argue for significant prison time. They'll remind the judge about Kylie and Isabella. About the lives cut short. About the families who have waited ten years for justice. About the parents who will never see their daughters graduate, get married, have children.
They'll talk about the decade the families have waited for accountability. They'll talk about the psychological toll of watching Scott live his life while their daughters' rooms sat empty. They'll talk about the protests and the legal maneuvering and the mistrials.
They'll emphasize that Scott rejected a plea deal and put everyone through a trial. He had the chance to accept responsibility. He chose to fight. He chose to argue that he did nothing wrong. That choice should have consequences.
They'll argue that the sentence needs to send a message. That law enforcement officers are not above the law. That badges don't provide immunity. That when you kill two teenagers through reckless driving, you go to prison.
The victims' families will almost certainly give impact statements. After ten years of fighting, they'll finally have the chance to speak directly to the man who killed their daughters and tell him what this did to them.
Kellie Lindsey will talk about Kylie. About the smile that was "contagious." About the girl who made everyone around her feel valued. About the senior year that never happened. About the graduation that never came. About the wedding she'll never attend, the grandchildren she'll never have.
Leslie Woods will talk about Isabella. About her dreams and goals. About her best friendship with Kylie. About the bedroom that sits exactly as she left it. About what it's like to walk past that door every day knowing your daughter is never coming back.
They'll speak their grief into the record. They'll make sure the court understands the human cost of what A.J. Scott did. They'll do what victims' families do: bear witness to their own devastation.
Judge Tisinger will have to decide what justice looks like. How do you sentence a man for killing one teenager and seriously injuring two others, when he was acquitted of killing a second teenager in the exact same crash?
Does the acquittal on Count 4 mean Scott deserves a lighter sentence? Or does the conduct underlying all the charges remain the same regardless of the split verdict?
It's going to be complicated. But then again, everything about this case has been complicated.
The one thing we know for certain is that A.J. Scott will be sentenced as a convicted felon. His days as mayor are over. His reputation is destroyed. Whatever happens at sentencing, his life will never be the same.
For Kellie Lindsey and Leslie Woods, that might be some comfort. It's not everything. It's not complete justice. But it's something.
And after ten years, something is better than nothing.
I'll be there for the sentencing. We'll cover it the same way we covered the trial: completely, honestly, with an eye toward what it means for the families and what it teaches us about how our system handles these cases.
Because that's what we do. We watch. We question. We refuse to let the system operate in darkness.
That's what my father did from a coffee shop in West Virginia. That's what I do from a broadcast studio. The platform changes. The mission stays the same.
Justice is a process. The process matters. And we're not done watching yet.