Jackson — A judge ordered admitted murderer Gary Michael Hilton sent to Florida to face a death penalty charge there. Still, Florida officials left the brief Friday morning court hearing emptyhanded.

Hilton has 30 days to appeal Butts County Judge Thomas Wilson's decision granting extradition. Until that time has passed, Hilton will remain in the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison near Jackson, where he is serving life without parole for the January murder of Meredith Emerson, a 24-year-old Buford woman he met hiking in North Georgia.

After Hilton pleaded guilty to beating to death and then decapitating Emerson, Leon County, Fla., prosecutors indicted him on charges he murdered and also decapitated Cheryl Dunlap, a nurse and Sunday school teacher.

Hilton has fought being sent to Florida, claiming the charges against him are not valid. Wilson told Hilton, however, the only issues in considering sending him there were is there a valid indictment and extradition order signed by Georgia's and Florida's governors and was he the man named on those documents.

Hilton twice interrupted the judge, arguing that his rights to have an attorney had been violated. Wilson told Hilton, who is indigent, he was not entitled to a state-paid lawyer because extradition is a civil, not a criminal, matter.

The issue was heard in Butts County because that is the home of the prison where Hilton is held.

Because Hilton has 30 days to appeal Friday decision's, Leon County prosecutor Willie Meggs and the detectives from the Leon County Sheriff's Office and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement returned to Tallahassee without their prisoner.

"It's not alright," Meggs said about having to wait at least a month to begin the prosecution of Hilton. "But we'll be there."