MOBILE, Ala. — A jury on Friday found a former train engineer guilty of criminally negligent homicide, a misdemeanor that was a less serious alternative to the reckless manslaughter charge he faced.
In rendering their verdict, jurors presumably accepted the argument from James Jeffery “Jamie” Elder’s lawyer that the 52-year-old Spanish Fort man’s conduct did not meet the legal definition of reckless.
“Very happy,” defense attorney John Beck said after the verdict. “The jury got it right. That’s what I wanted out of the case for the last four years.”
Mobile County Circuit Judge Jay York set sentencing for Nov. 9. Elder faces a maximum of one year in jail.
The Wreck at Blount Curve
The wreck occurred in November 2020 along a stretch of track known as Blount Curve. The freight train collided with a crew of workers who were replacing railroad ties. The crash killed Dexter Scott.
The Video the Jury Saw
During closing arguments, Mobile County Assistant District Attorney Jessica Catlin replayed video shown to the jurors during the trial. The split screen showed the inside of the locomotive on one side, timed to video showing the track in front of the train.
Elder spent much of the time leading up to the wreck holding his phone. At one point he placed a hat over the camera, but he remained partially visible, talking to someone and holding the device in a manner Catlin said suggests he was taking pictures below his waist.
Catlin said every railroad company Elder worked for prohibited using a cell phone during operation of the train.
“The one thing that’s stayed consistent – do not be on your cell phone while operating a locomotive,” she said. “That’s the one rule. It’s the one rule that’s been consistent. … That cell phone is the beginning of the end of Dexter Scott.”
Catlin said it was reckless behavior for someone operating a five-ton locomotive pulling a mile-long train.
“This is not an accident,” she said. “It’s a willful disregard for human life.”
The Defense: “You Screwed Up”
Beck told jurors during his summation that he would not contend that Elder acted appropriately.
“I’m not here to insult anyone’s intelligence,” he said.
Then, turning toward his client and raising his voice slightly, he said: “You screwed up.”
Beck challenged the evidence presented by prosecutors, asking why they relied so heavily on testimony from an inspector with the Federal Railroad Administration and did not call any of the 13 witnesses he interviewed.
The Distinction the Case Turned On
Beck urged jurors to focus on the legal definitions the judge would give during his instructions before deliberations.
Offering the example of a driver, he said it would be murder to intentionally run into someone with the intent to kill. It would be reckless, he added, to see a train coming and then try to beat it at an intersection, even with a small child as a passenger in the vehicle. But an accident caused by negligence is more akin to what Elder did.
“Do not be misled into conflating negligence with some other standard,” he said.
That distinction is the substance of the verdict. Under Alabama law, recklessness requires that a person be aware of and consciously disregard a substantial and unjustifiable risk. Criminal negligence requires only that the person should have been aware of that risk and failed to perceive it.
The gap between those two mental states is the gap between reckless manslaughter — a Class B felony carrying two to 20 years — and criminally negligent homicide, a Class A misdemeanor carrying up to one year in jail.
The jury’s verdict indicates it concluded Elder failed to perceive a risk he should have perceived, rather than that he knew of the risk and disregarded it anyway.
Sentencing Nov. 9
Judge York set sentencing for Nov. 9. The maximum penalty is one year in jail.
The prosecution’s case took four years to reach a verdict from the November 2020 wreck — a timeline the defense attorney referenced directly in his reaction to the verdict.