GA v. A.J. Scott

Anthony James "A.J." Scott, a former Georgia State Patrol trooper who later became mayor of Buchanan, was charged in the deaths of two teenage girls. The State alleged that on the night of September 26, 2015, Scott drove his patrol car roughly 90 miles per hour along Highway 27 in Carroll County with no emergency lights, no siren, and no call to answer. Prosecutors said he was simply driving to retrieve a radio battery when he crested a hill and slammed into a Nissan Sentra turning left onto Holly Springs Road. According to the State, that crash killed 16-year-old Isabella Chinchilla and 17-year-old Kylie Lindsey and left two teenage boys with serious injuries. Scott was accused of two counts of second-degree vehicular homicide, two counts of serious injury by vehicle, violation of oath of office, speeding, and reckless driving. He pleaded not guilty.

The trial did not center on who was behind the wheel or how fast the car was moving. Scott's own patrol vehicle data recorder and his own words at the scene settled those points. The fight was over whether excessive speed with no emergency reason amounted to criminal recklessness, or whether the collision was a tragic accident someone else caused. The defense pointed at the teenage driver, arguing he failed to yield when he turned across the highway, and raised the presence of alcohol containers in the wrecked car. Prosecutors countered that a trained trooper who chose to drive at nearly double the limit, on wet roads, at night, for no call, showed exactly the conscious disregard the law forbids. That was the question the jury had to answer.

The case went to trial, and a jury found Anthony James Scott guilty. That verdict arrived nearly a decade after the crash, after three grand juries, a mistrial, and years of delay that we tracked step by step. At Justice Is A Process, we watched this one closely because it tested a simple promise: that the rules apply the same way to a man who once carried a badge as they would to anyone else. We followed whether the system finally did its job for Kylie Lindsey and Isabella Chinchilla. The full coverage of every court day is laid out below.