Brad Post: Alright. Welcome to the Florida Defense podcast, floridadefense.com podcast. We are speaking to Clearwater assault and battery defense lawyer with Bauer, Crider and Parry, Mike Kenny. And Mike we talked a little bit about assault and battery in the podcast before this one, but we’re also going to be talking a little bit more about violent crimes in this one. Correct?

Michael D. Kenny, Attorney: Sure, yes.

B: So, I’m just going to turn it over to you.

M: All right, so we talked before the previous podcast about assault and battery charges, and how these things get enhanced. You know, violent crimes in general, the way they get treated Florida – they’re very specific, every type of action probably has a specific criminal act outline. For instance, people have mentioned the term “drive-by shooting”, and there is actually a specific charge called shooting from an occupied vehicle. And there is actually another charge shooting into an occupied vehicle. And those could be two separate counts. So, you can imagine a situation we have a person driving his car, shooting out of his car, into another car. While that’s one act, they could be two separate charges there. There is obviously also shooting into house. There’s shooting into an occupied dwelling. And, those are pretty serious charges.

Any kind of shooting charge carries with it a very significant penalty. Because in the state of Florida there has been a very strong act to swiftly and significantly punish firearms-type charges. In Florida we have a 10/20/life statute. And kind of what the 10/20/life statue stands for - there are these three aspects: 10 years is supposed to be if you possess a gun during the commission of a felony you get 10 year minimum mandatory prison sentence, 20 years is the part where that 10 years goes up to 20 if you discharge a firearm, and then life, life means if you kill a person or cause serious bodily injury in the state of Florida (if you use a firearm to do that) you get 25 years to life. So, any time there is a discharge of a firearm case, there is a 20, potential 20 year minimum mandatory sentence you’re looking at. Now, obviously depending upon if anyone was hit, and will it gets a lot more significant than that.

Firearms charges cover the whole gamut. You have firearms charges included in battery cases, in assault cases. The unique thing is when a person commits an aggravated assault with a firearm. Instead of getting that ten year minimum mandatory prison sentence, it’s only three years. That’s just specifically because of the way the statue was written saying aggravated assault with a firearm that’s what makes it the charge a felony in and of itself, so we’re not going to say you carried a firearm during the commission of this felony. But everything else, a burglary, a person commits an armed burglary, for instance, that’s something actually punishable by life. But, if a person commits certain charges with a firearm, you significantly impact the minimum amount of time that these people are facing. And, in the state of Florida, it's been, according to the statistics that the numbers of been very on helpful in combating things like recidivism. I think some of the problem of having these minimum mandatory sentences as you take away a little bit of discretion, or a lot of discretion from the judge. A lot of times you have some folks who maybe find themselves for the first time involved in a bad situation, and unfortunately there is a firearm involved, and they automatically graduate “big boy school” and they're looking at spending decades in prison for one event in their life that probably they if they could do everything to take it back they would. And there are probably some cases where you know where discretion would help. And I think sometimes that that the judges should be given that ability to look at who the individual is, and see where they’re going, and see if there’s any help in reform.

The unique thing we have is the youthful offender statute when it comes to these violent crime type cases. In any case, even though there is a minimum mandatory prison sentences, a person who is under the age of 21 – that’s the one situation where the judge is allowed to depart from what the mandatory minimum sentences might be. And give these folks almost like a second shot.

So violent crimes covers a whole host of things obviously including homicide. There are certain changes to the homicide statute that impact who the victim might be. There are certain enhancements depending on who the victim might be in a homicide. And there’s a whole lot different ways that homicides get punished in the state of Florida. And, that’s something we’re going to talk about during our next podcast.

B: All right. Anything else and Mike?

M: No sir.

B: All right. You’ve been listening to the Florida Defense podcast. We’ve been speaking to Clearwater assault and battery defense lawyer Mike Kenny and at the Bauer, Crider and Parry, law firm. And check us out on the next podcast.