assault, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. The trial court sentenced both men to life imprisonment for the malice murder conviction, five years suspended for possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime to run consecutively to malice murder, and another five years suspended for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon to run consecutively to the other weapons charge, for a total sentence of life plus ten years suspended. The trial court then purportedly merged the appellants’ felony murder counts and aggravated assault charges into their respective malice murder convictions. However, the felony murder counts did not “merge” but were vacated by operation of law. See Favors, 296 Ga. at 847-848 (5) (<HOLDING>); Hurt v. State, 298 Ga. 51 (779 SE2d 313)
holding that first and seconddegree intentional murder verdicts are consistent with a felony murder verdict because lack of intent is not an element of seconddegree felony murder holding that where both firstdegree and felony murder were possible bases for a murder conviction a jury instruction that suggested the jury could rely on felony murder as the predicate offense for a conviction for conspiracy to commit murder was improper because under arizona law a conviction for conspiracy to commit firstdegree murder requires a specific intent to kill holding that felony murder verdicts did not merge into a malice murder verdict but were instead vacated by operation of law holding constitutional arizonas scheme of providing general verdicts for firstdegree murder based on either premeditation or felony murder without requiring jury unanimity holding error is not harmless when the accused is convicted of firstdegree murder on a general verdict after a trial in which premeditation and felony murder theories are espoused if the felony underlying the felony murder charge is based on a legally unsupportable theory