Appellant Rico Antonio Lucky was convicted of and sentenced for felony murder with armed robbery as the underlying felony, assault with a deadly weapon, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime. On appeal, he challenges the sufficiency of the evidence supporting his convictions and takes issue with the trial court’s decisions with regard to the guilty verdicts on which sentence was imposed.1 On July 28, 2004, Edward Rivers, Jr. was fatally shot after answering a knock on the door of the Clayton County apartment he shared with a friend. The friend, in the bathroom when the victim was shot, heard two people rummaging through the apartment after the shooting and discovered his and the victim’s wallets were missing after the two intruders left. Neighbors told police they saw two men running from the building where the victim’s apartment was located to a green Volkswagen Jetta with damage on one side. Appellant Rico Lucky, the owner of a damaged green Jetta, contacted Clayton County police and stated he had visited the apartment complex where the victim lived on the day of the shooting. He also told police that a passenger in his car, DeJuan Curinton2, had told appellant after the shooting that he had shot the victim. Another passenger in Lucky’s car testified that he, appellant, and a third man known only as Link had gone to the apartment complex to visit Curinton and to purchase marijuana through him. The passenger also testified that Link and Curinton had gone to the victim’s apartment and returned to the car where appellant and the passenger awaited them. A resident of the apartment complex testified that two days before the victim was shot, appellant had admonished the victim for being involved with Curinton’s girlfriend; that the night before the shooting, the victim and Curinton had talked in the complex’s parking lot and the witness heard the girlfriend’s name mentioned; and that, just before the victim was shot, appellant and Curinton talked privately for about five minutes.
Several weeks after Curinton was arrested and charged with murder, appellant was in Sarasota County, Florida, where he flagged down a deputy sheriff and told him he wanted to talk with someone about a Georgia homicide. Appellant told a Sarasota County detective that he had caused the victim’s homicide by exploiting a rift between Curinton and the victim, and had used Curinton to do his “dirty work.”
