Pinellas County Sexual Battery Defense Lawyer

FloridaDefense.com

Sex Crimes Kids

Bauer Crider & Parry Podcast

Brad: Alright, you are listening to the FloridaDefense.com Podcast. We are speaking to St Petersburg Sexual Battery Defense Lawyer Mike Kenny at the Bauer Crider & Parry Law Firm. Mike, how are you?

Mike: I'm very well. How are you doing?

B: I'm doing well. Today we're going to be talking about sex crimes versus kids but I want to just kind of throw out there I know you guys have multiple offices. You kind of cover a wide area there in the Tampa, the greater Tampa area. Could you mention kind of, well first of all, let's talk about the offices that you have and then some of the other areas that you target.

M: Well, we have an office in Hillsborough County, and that office is actually right across the street from the courthouse on Twiggs Street in Tampa. So that office is kind of designed for our Tampa clients and our Tampa type cases which covers anything from Plant City, Wesley Chapel, New Tampa, obviously the entire Tampa area. We have an office in Clearwater, and that's kind of more of our Pinellas County office and obviously it's gonna cover all of your cases throughout Pinellas County which will be Clearwater, Clearwater Beach, St Petersburg, St Pete Beach, Largo, Tarpon Springs, you've got Pinellas Park, Kenneth City, obviously Pinellas County is a large area and we definitely cover a lot of cases throughout the county there. We have two offices in Pasco County. We have one in Port Richey and one in Trinity Florida. Obviously our Pasco County reach covers New Port Richey, Dade City, Port Richey, Holiday. The Port Richey office also covers Brooksville cases which I tend to handle on a repeat basis and the main area in Hernando County that I cover is going to be Brooksville and obviously then we have our Trinity office. Our Trinity office also covers, because we do a lot of work in Pasco County, covers the same places in Pasco County, New Port Richey, Port Richey, Holiday, Dade City, Hudson.

B: Great. So you guys are pretty much all over the place in the Tampa area with four different offices to choose from.

M: Sure.

B: Well, let's - Mike, let's go ahead and jump in. Let's talk a little bit about sex crimes versus kids or versus a child and I'll just kind of if you can kind of just give us an overview of that.

M: Alright, well, so there's two types of sex crimes, or two categories of sex crimes involving children. And there's actually, now that I think about it there might actually be even three if you want to kind of divide it up even further. But the sex crimes are initially the battery - whether or not there's a sexual battery. Battery, as I talked about in a previous podcast talks about essentially penetration. That's what you're looking for. Sexual battery is defined as oral, anal, or vaginal penetration by or union with the sexual organ of another or the anal or vaginal penetration of another by any other object. So that's kind of what you look for if you're talking about was it a sexual battery or not? And there's other types of crimes and crimes that don't involve penetration but involve touching - that's where you get the term molestation.

3:46 (skipped per Brad's request)

3:54 But those types of crimes are crimes that don't involve any type of sexual battery, whether it be penetration of the mouth with a sexual organ or the penis or vagina. So in that set of circumstances, you've got that category and then the next category is the age. Obviously, as we talked about before, the age of consent for sexual activity in Florida, generally speaking, is 16 years old. So the key age that we look for in a sexual battery case is the victim has to be 15 or younger. So if the victim is under the age of 15, that becomes a crime if there is either a molestation or there is a penetration, sexual battery type situation. So if you have a scenario where there has been alleged sexual activity like actual intercourse between someone over the age of 15 - and that could be 16, 17, 18, whatever, you don't even have to be an adult, but someone over the age of 15 having sexual intercourse with a 15 year old, that is a lewd or lascivious battery. And that's a specific crime that addresses sex of a person younger than 16 - basically 15 and older than 12 - it's a lewd or lascivious battery. If a person, this is the next category that I was going to talk to you about - this third unique category. If a person who is a victim of a sexual battery is under the age of 12, that in Florida is defined as a Capital Sexual Battery. Years and years and years ago that crime was punishable by death. Now it is obviously punishable by life in prison without parole. So if a person is convicted of a sexual battery, there is no other option for that person other than a life in prison type sentence. So the age matters very much because it completely changes the term of years a person might be facing and the severity of sentence the person might be facing. If a person's under 12 and it's sexual intercourse, it's gonna be a life imprisonment sentence if they get convicted. If a person's under 15, it's gonna be much less significant, it's not even gonna be a life sentence at all. The next question or category of concern is the molestation type charges. A lewd or lascivious molestation can happen above or under the clothing so situations where a person is fondled over their shirt, for instance, that can qualify as a lewd or lascivious molestation.

B: Mike, can I jump in real quick there. That is similar to - you said that you don't necessarily have indecent exposure there in Florida, but that's kind of what that's referring to, is that correct?

M: No, that's another unique, it's not really a crime where there's contact with another person, but in Florida, obviously everyone can imagine there's crimes that involve people exposing themselves to other folks. In Florida that's called a lewd or lascivious exhibition. A lewd or lascivious exhibition, the key phrase there is lewd or lascivious, that the person is exposing him or herself in a lewd or lascivious manner, which means of a sexually oriented nature. For instance, give you an idea, a guy who's driving on a long trip and had a lot to drink beverage wise and needs to get out of the car and use the facilities of the forest, that person is not committing a lewd or lascivious exhibition if he gets caught by police urinating on the side of the road. Now, there is another crime for that. That's generally speaking a disorderly conduct type crime, but there's also a crime called exposure of sexual organs. That's a misdemeanor and it's not a sex related crime per say, you don't have a sexual registration requirement or anything like that, but exposure of sexual organs comes up when a person's (obviously sexual organs being a penis or a vagina) are exposed and there's nothing about the act in and of itself that shows it's of a sexually motivated manner. There isn't any talk about sex, there isn't any fondling. There isn't anything that would indicate other than the person is exposed. So that's a misdemeanor. But if a person exposes himself and exposes himself to a person under the age of 16, that's when you start to get into the lewd or lascivious exhibition problem. That's when you get to the felony aspect of it. It has to be both an exposure and it has to be an exposure in front of a person under the age of 16, you need a witness to it who is under the age of 16, and it has to be again, of a lewd or lascivious manner. So it's got to be something that is sexually oriented and I'm sure we don't need to go over every single scenario where that could be, but some unique cases have come up where there have been cases that have been litigated and actually gone up to appellate courts where a person fought a lewd or lascivious exhibition conviction because he or she answered the door and he happened to be naked from the waist down and there happened to be some children who were at the door. Some discussion about those cases talked about how he might have been in his own home but he clearly knew that there was children coming to the door to sell something. Sell raffle tickets, girl scout cookies, and even talked about whether or not there was - the sexual organ itself was flaccid or not. So there's a lot of things that the court looks to to describe the intentional exposure of a sexual organ designed to be in a lewd and lascivious manner.

B: Alright, one thing we didn't talk about is child pornography, which is obviously a sex crime versus a kid, right? Might be a whole another podcast, but is there anything that you want to touch on that?

M: Well, the and we kind of had a podcast before talking about computer crimes, but the issue of possession of child pornography that the basic idea behind it is the person either has an image either on paper - tangible like he can hold it - or he or she has it in his computer and they're images of children. And they're not photographs of baby pictures, right? I'm sure everybody has a baby picture somewhere of his or her own child. But these are photographs that have the children in a sexually provocative manner. It's not just a naked child, but it's a child in a sexually oriented fashion. A lot of these images that get caught and punished are horrible images of children involved in sexual activity with other children or even adults. So it's not something where someone can get in trouble just for having a naked picture, because that's not necessarily pornography. Pornography has to have a sexual element attached to it. The sex crimes that we were talking about where we have the under 12 which is a life felony if it's a sexual battery. If it's not a sexual battery but a molestation, which is a hand touching the chest or the buttocks or the sexual organ of the other person, those are molestation type cases. And if the person is under 12 in that case, but it's not a sexual battery, it's still a life type felony. When I say a life type felony, those cases are punishable by 25 years to life. So the idea here, is the legislature is very hard on sex crimes to begin with and the laws are very strict, but they are even more severe when the children become of such a young age that we're talking 10 or 11 years old - anything under 12. As a prosecutor, I prosecuted tons of capital sexual battery cases. I went to trial on several and those folks who got convicted are still sitting in prison and they're going to spend the rest of their lives in prison. So the penalty is severe. That's why, if you find yourself accused of something this horrific, the first thing you're gonna want to do is make sure you find yourself a lawyer who you trust and a lawyer who you believe has got the ability to defend you. Because the cost is great.

B: Alright, anything else on that Mike?

M: No Sir, I think that covers it.

B: You've been listening to the FloridaDefense.com Podcast. We've been speaking to St Petersburg Criminal Defense Attorney Mike Kenny at the Bauer Crider & Parry Law Firm. We will see you on the next podcast.