Tampa Murder Defense Attorney

 

Brad Post: All right. Welcome to the floridadefense.com podcast. We are speaking to Bauer, Crider, and Parry, Mike Kenny. He’s a Tampa murder defense attorney, same with all the attorneys there at Bauer, Crider, and Parry. Mike, how are you doing today?

Michael D. Kenny, Attorney: I'm doing well. How are you doing?

B: Good. Good. Well, we’re in the series. Basically we talked about violent crimes. We’ve talked about assault and battery. You mentioned a little bit on homicide in the last one, and we’re going to be talking more about homicide and murder in this one. Correct?

M: That's right.

B: All right. So I’ll turn it over to you.

M: Sure. So, in the state of Florida murder has a couple of different categories. There’s the murder that probably a lot of us are kind of accustomed to. We’ve heard about premeditated murder. That’s first-degree murder. So, in the state of Florida when a human being is killed from a premeditated design to affect the death of that person. What that simply means is the thought and the intent, to bring about somebody else’s death, and the forethought, the thinking about it ahead of time. That’s a first-degree murder. The reason why that's so significant is because the penalties that that charge is punishable by. In the state of Florida, only first-degree murders are punishable by death, by capital punishment. There’s a certain process that has to be gone through in order to in order to get that penalty, because of some cases that have come out in the past several years the juries have to make certain findings. And the juries actually have to make certain recommendations that the courts are, although the final decision makers, and what the penalty is. The jury has to make certain findings on whether certain actions would warrant the death penalty.

The next category is a second-degree murder. And a second-degree murder is what is commonly called the depraved heart murder or depraved mind murder. And that's something that comes up when a person ends up bringing about the death of another person, but they don't have a premeditated design to do that. It’s simply one of those acts where the person hates the other person so much, or wants to harm the other person so much that they don't think about it. There isn’t some preplanning. And usually when you see that come up, it’s usually what comes up when two people meet each other and in a heated moment, get into a fight, and the other person ends up committing some significant injury or harm to the person, and ends up the killing the person. So, it's significantly different, it’s still punishable by life in prison, but a second-degree murder is not punishable by death. And the second-degree murder basically talks about a person who ends up doing an act that’s imminently dangerous to another person, which shows that he got depraved mind, and he’s regardless of human life, without any premeditated design to effect that death of any particular person. So, the idea is that it just shows that this person hates this other individual so much, that he doesn't really care, he just commits this act that brings about somebody’s death.

After that, you get into a category that is known as manslaughter. The manslaughter category is kind of anything else that a person is killed where you didn't plan to kill that person. That's really the layman’s explanation of it.

B: Kind of like a car wreck, or something like?

M: Correct. You can get in a car accident. Obviously, you have to show that there was some culpability, some criminal culpability involved there but a lot of times it’s somebody being careless with a firearm. But the manslaughter definition is defined as the killing of a human being, by the act, procurement or culpable negligence of another, without lawful justification, and in cases in which such killings shall not be excusable homicide, or murder, according to the provisions of this chapter.

Manslaughter is a second-degree felony punishable by a maximum of 15 years in jail. Now, manslaughter changes if a death happens, that’s considered a manslaughter, but a firearm is used. That takes it out of the second-degree felony range, and it’s punishable by up to 30 years in prison. So, it changes things a little bit.

So, that’s the basic categories of homicide. And, all these other little categories that kind of change depending upon other aspects, but those of the basic categories.

Then, as far as first-degree murder, there's a lot of ways you can get first-degree murder without the prosecutor having to show that you had a premeditated design to bring somebody’s death. And that's obviously sometimes difficult. Human beings, it's really had a hard to know it's going on inside somebody's mind. And especially because most people don't talk about what their thinking when their doing it. So, it’s one of those things that you have to look at the ac