Background
On the night of April 26–27, 2014, Rodrez Deon Williams was shot and killed in Ware County, Georgia. Dexter Carridine was jointly indicted with Torrence James Mitchell for malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime; Carridine alone was also charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. The key evidence against Carridine included testimony from Mitchell — the victim’s brother-in-law and the getaway driver — who placed Carridine in the backseat of the car from which three shots were fired. Carridine also purchased a prepaid cell phone the day before the murder, used it exclusively to contact Williams leading up to the shooting, and later discarded both phones in a storm drain.
Carridine was tried alone before a Ware County jury in March 2016. On the morning of trial, he sought to discharge his second appointed counsel and requested a continuance to retain private counsel — his first indication he wished to hire his own attorney, two years into his pretrial detention. The trial court denied the continuance, conducted an extensive on-the-record colloquy with Carridine about the risks of self-representation, and ultimately allowed him to proceed pro se after he repeatedly refused to continue with appointed counsel. He was convicted on all counts and sentenced to life in prison for malice murder, with consecutive five-year terms for each firearm offense.
Carridine’s motion for new trial was denied in 2020, but the trial court did not transmit the record to the Supreme Court until August 2025 — a delay attributed to staffing burdens in the clerk’s office. The appeal was then briefed and submitted for decision.
The Court’s Holding
The Supreme Court of Georgia affirmed Carridine’s convictions in full. On sufficiency of the evidence, the court held that the circumstantial evidence — including Mitchell’s eyewitness account, the cell phone purchase and disposal, blood evidence, and the medical examiner’s findings regarding contact and close-range wounds — was sufficient for a rational jury to find Carridine guilty of malice murder beyond a reasonable doubt under Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307 (1979). The court rejected Carridine’s argument that the absence of the murder weapon or forensic trace evidence was fatal to the verdict, reiterating that the State need not prove its case with any particular type of evidence.
On the continuance issue, the court held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion. Applying a reasonable-diligence standard, the court found that Carridine had offered nothing beyond a “mere possibility” of retaining private counsel — he had never spoken to a private attorney, raised no funds, and waited until the morning of jury selection to make the request, even after the court had rejected a request for new appointed counsel three months earlier.
On self-representation, the court held that the trial court’s thorough Faretta colloquy established that Carridine’s waiver of counsel was knowing and intelligent. Although Carridine never explicitly stated he wished to represent himself — consistently framing his position as firing his lawyer while seeking a continuance — the court found that his repeated refusal to continue with appointed counsel, in the face of full disclosure of the consequences, constituted an effective and voluntary waiver. As a sua sponte correction, however, the court vacated the concurrent life sentence imposed for felony murder, because the felony murder count merged by operation of law into the malice murder conviction when both arose from a single victim’s death.
Key Takeaways
- Circumstantial evidence — including phone records, witness testimony placing the defendant at the scene, and forensic evidence consistent with a close-range shooting — can be sufficient to sustain a malice murder conviction even without the murder weapon or physical forensic evidence directly linking the defendant.
- A defendant seeking a continuance to retain private counsel must demonstrate reasonable diligence: waiting until the morning of trial, without having contacted any private attorney or arranged funding, satisfies neither the diligence requirement nor the Sixth Amendment.
- A knowing and intelligent waiver of counsel does not require the defendant to affirmatively say “I want to represent myself” — a persistent refusal to proceed with available, prepared appointed counsel, after a thorough Faretta colloquy, can constitute an effective waiver.
- When dual sentences are imposed for malice murder and felony murder based on a single victim, the felony murder sentence is void and must be vacated, even if neither party raises the issue on appeal.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the high bar defendants face when seeking last-minute continuances to change counsel. Courts will look hard at whether a defendant made any concrete effort to retain private representation before the day of trial — mere assertions of intent to seek private counsel will not suffice. The decision also illustrates that a defendant’s strategic ambiguity about self-representation (simultaneously “firing” counsel while seeking a continuance) will not insulate against a finding of waiver when the trial court has fully discharged its Faretta obligations.
The court’s sua sponte correction of the merger error also serves as a reminder that malice murder and felony murder cannot both be sentenced when they arise from a single victim’s death — a recurring issue in Georgia capital and violent-crime sentencing that appellate courts will address regardless of whether the parties raise it.