Brad Post: Welcome to the floridadefense.com podcast. We are speaking to St. Petersburg drive-by shootings attorneys Bauer, Crider, and Parry. It's also Pinellas County correct? St. Petersburg, Mike?

Michael D. Kenny, Attorney: That's right.

B: We’re speaking to attorney Mike Kenny, and Mike let’s talk a little bit about that drive-by shootings today.

M: Sure. Drive-by shootings is the way most people understand, it's a crime where a person fires a gun while they’re in a vehicle, and potentially driving by a location. So, Florida has designed a couple of statutes that specifically try to address that scenario. There isn’t a drive-by shooting crime per se. Shooting at somebody is a crime. Killing somebody is a crime. Those kind of take care of themselves. But they do have some shootings, some crimes that involve shooting from a car, or into a car. So, one of that one of the crimes that Florida has is discharging, or shooting from a vehicle, discharging a firearm from a vehicle. So, if you’re inside a car and you shoot, you shoot from a car, there is a specific statute that addresses that. And, that’s a felony. That's actually because there's a discharge of a firearm. Carries with it a pretty significant minimum mandatory prison sentence.

And then there's shooting into an occupied vehicle which can happen whether you're standing on the street and a car drives by and you shoot into it, or you're in a car and you shoot into another car you can imagine that scenario. So, that's designed to address people who are being victimized while they’re inside of a car. And there’s a scenario where you can be in one car, and shoot into another car, and you get charged with two counts - shooting from and shooting into. A lot of times you see people, I've had cases where a person is charged with discharging a firearm while shooting from a vehicle and into a house. Because shooting into an occupied dwelling is another category of crime. So, the way the legislature has done it, they’ve kind of gotten specific scenarios all seem to address that issue that apparently was a concern about people basically exploiting opportunities to shoot people by surprise without them without being aware.

So, the penalties are significant, like I said, because they involve Florida's 10/20 life statute. And the 10/20 life statute is specifically going to give you a 20 year minimum mandatory prison sentence if it’s been found that you have discharged a firearm. Mere possession of the firearm is a 10 year minimum mandatory sentence. And, obviously if somebody gets hit, and seriously injured or killed, a person can get 25 years to life, and often times it's, it's a life for these types of cases. And the unique thing about Florida is that they kind of have catchall crimes to begin with. Any one of the things that we just described could easily fit the category of an aggravated assault with a firearm, or an aggravated battery with a firearm. But a discharging from an occupied vehicle is just more, has a little bit more to it, a little bit more teeth to the charge, versus an aggravated assault with a firearm without discharging it. While it’s significant, it is a three year minimum mandatory prison sentence where you get 20 years on one of these shooting from an occupied dwelling type cases. Like I said, I've been involved in plenty of these cases, and they obviously come up in situations where a lot of times there is witness issues, and not everybody knows even who it was or where it was. So, a lot times piecing these things together by the by the physical evidence and the forensic evidence. What I have found to be an issue a lot of times is these crimes often come in when they’re involving occupied vehicles by more than one person. And, the idea of getting law enforcement to be able to say who the exact shooter was is isn’t always that easy. They try to do an investigation and piece it together, and some things that they use, gunpowder residue test. Obviously witness statements and witness testimony. But these things happen so fast sometimes that it's not always that easy to have reliable witness information. I’ve been involved in plenty of these types of cases, both as a prosecutor and a defense lawyer. And it's very important, probably from the law enforcement perspective, to kind of figure out who is involved very early on, and try to have contact because as time goes on things get much harder for them to piece together a case. Especially if the evidence isn’t always going to be there anymore as far as the firearm, or the gunpowder residue, and gunshot residue tests that they perform in people's hands to show whether not they’ve discharged a firearm. But, that's as far as drive-by shootings in particular, those categories are really the categories of crimes that the specific types of crimes that kind of encompass that drive-by shooting scenario. That that pretty much wraps it up.

B: All right. You’ve been listening to the floridadefense.com podcast. You can check them out online: Bauer, Crider, and Parry. We been speaking to Mike Kenny.