Brundage v. State

Rondriques Brundage shot and killed Rodrell Matthews at a DeKalb County home in 2018, then helped move the body before fleeing to Florida. At trial he claimed self-defense, saying he grabbed a gun off the ground because he believed Matthews would shoot someone. A jury acquitted him of malice murder and aggravated assault but convicted him of felony murder based on illegally possessing a gun as a convicted felon, along with related firearm and body-concealment charges. Brundage appealed, arguing his lawyer should have objected when the prosecutor told the jury that self-defense never applies to a felon who possesses a gun outside a brief 'window of necessity,' even though Georgia law lets a felon claim self-defense specifically for the murder charge. The Supreme Court of Georgia agreed that this failure to object was a serious error that likely changed the outcome, so it reversed the felony murder and related firearm conviction, while leaving the concealment conviction in place.

Under Georgia's felon self-defense statute (OCGA § 16-11-138), a convicted felon may still claim self-defense against a felony murder charge predicated on illegal firearm possession, even if he possessed the gun outside the moment of necessity; defense counsel's failure to object to the prosecutor's contrary argument was deficient and prejudicial.

The ruling reinforces that Georgia felons can still claim self-defense against a felony murder charge tied to illegal gun possession, and it puts prosecutors and defense lawyers on notice that closing arguments blurring this distinction can require a new trial. Brundage now faces a possible retrial.

Affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded

1. The court applied the two-part test for ineffective assistance of counsel from Strickland v. Washington, which requires showing both that the lawyer's performance was objectively unreasonable and that this failure likely changed the trial's outcome.
2. Georgia's felon self-defense statute (OCGA § 16-11-138) makes self-defense an absolute defense to felony murder predicated on being a felon in possession of a firearm, meaning illegal possession outside the moment of the shooting does not itself defeat a self-defense claim to the murder charge.
3. The prosecutor's closing argument wrongly suggested that a felon who possessed a gun before or after a brief 'window of necessity' loses the right to claim self-defense at all, which misstated this rule as applied to the murder charge rather than just the possession charge.
4. The trial judge's jury instructions did not clearly correct this error and, if anything, reinforced it by repeating similar language about justified possession only during a window of necessity, without explaining that self-defense could still apply to the murder charge.
5. Because the jury asked to have self-defense re-explained and reached inconsistent verdicts (acquitting on aggravated assault-based felony murder but convicting on felon-in-possession-based felony murder), the court found a reasonable probability that juror confusion, caused by counsel's failure to object, changed the verdict.
6. Since the evidence was otherwise legally sufficient to support the convictions, the court allowed the State to retry Brundage on the reversed counts rather than barring further prosecution.

• felony murder
• self-defense
• felon in possession of a firearm
• ineffective assistance of counsel
• DeKalb County