Dennis Allaben was convicted of malice murder and related offenses after strangling his wife, concealing her body, and telling relatives that her death had resulted from an attempt to restrain her. The jury also found him guilty of reckless conduct based on the same strangling. The Georgia Supreme Court held that the reckless-conduct verdict was mutually exclusive of the intent-based murder and assault verdicts because the indictment, evidence, instructions, and closing argument did not separate an allegedly negligent act from an intentional one. The State’s suggestion that the jury may have found an evolving intent could not eliminate the reasonable probability of an invalid combination of verdicts. The resulting judgment was void, even though several verdicts had been merged into the malice-murder conviction or vacated by operation of law. The Court reversed the malice-murder conviction, set aside the guilty verdicts for malice murder and reckless conduct, and remanded for a possible new trial on those counts. It also set aside the felony-murder, aggravated-assault, battery, and simple-battery verdicts as mutually exclusive and explained that some could potentially be entered on remand only if legally valid. The Court did not reach the remaining claims because they were unlikely to recur. Judgment was reversed and the case remanded.