FOX 13 chief investigator Craig Patrick says there are inmates across America still serving time under laws that don’t exist anymore.
One of the clearest examples, he reports, is a Florida father named Robert Woodall.
Patrick’s report follows Woodall’s story over more than two decades.
It’s a case that forces hard questions about mandatory gun sentences, judicial discretion, and what “justice” really means when the law itself has changed.
Woodall isn’t arguing that what he did was okay.
In fact, Patrick notes he’s the first to say that people who do bad things should face serious consequences.
But as Patrick tells it, Woodall is now finishing a 20-year sentence under a version of Florida’s “10-20-Life” gun law the state has already moved away from.
And that’s what makes this story so uncomfortable: the system changed, but his punishment did not.
A Drunken Night, Warning Shots, And A Ricochet
Patrick explains that everything started just before Christmas more than 20 years ago.
Woodall’s fiancée Stephanie developed postpartum depression, left him, and took their two young sons to Texas.
“I watched them out the window and as they turned a corner, I just broke out and cried,” Woodall tells Patrick.
Friends took him out drinking to cope.
Later that night, Patrick says, Woodall and his buddies got into a scuffle with some men in an elevator.
A security guard broke it up, and everyone went their separate ways.
None of them realized they lived across the street from each other.
So when Woodall pulled into his place and saw the same men again, tempers flared.
Patrick says the fight picked back up.
Woodall hit one man in the nose.
Then, according to Woodall’s account in the FOX 13 report, he grabbed his legally owned handgun and fired “warning shots” into the ground to break up the fight.
One of those bullets ricocheted and hit a man in the ankle.
In court, Patrick notes, the victim with the broken nose actually asked the judge for some clemency for Woodall, for the sake of his kids.
But the judge’s hands were tied.
Under Florida’s old 10-20-Life law, firing a gun in an assault meant an automatic 20-year sentence.
No wiggle room. No matter the specifics.
“They don’t do that anymore,” Patrick says bluntly in his narration.
But at the time, they did. And Woodall got the full 20.
How 10-20-Life Locked In A 20-Year Punishment
Patrick walks viewers through the law that shaped everything.
Enacted in 1999, Florida’s 10-20-Life statute required:
- 10 years for displaying a gun in certain felonies
- 20 years for firing it
- 25 years to life if someone was hurt
Critics later argued that the law was too rigid, forcing judges to impose harsh sentences even when there were strong mitigating factors.
No one could look at the whole situation and say, “This should be handled differently.”
Patrick points out that courts eventually struck down part of the statute.
Florida lawmakers later rewrote it to give judges more discretion in firearm cases.
In other words, if Woodall’s case happened today, a judge would actually be allowed to weigh the circumstances.
But none of those reforms were made retroactive.
That legal technicality is the pivot point of Patrick’s entire story.
The law evolved. Woodall’s sentence did not.
From a common-sense perspective, that feels wrong.
From a strictly legal perspective, it’s exactly how the system was designed.
Freedom, Redemption – And Then A Sudden Reversal
After serving 11 years of his 20-year sentence, Patrick reports that Woodall’s lawyers spotted a path to challenge his conviction.
A judge later ruled there had been a procedural error related to the jury findings.
That ruling set Woodall free in 2017.
Patrick interviewed him at his Lake County home after his release.
“He made a decision in that courtroom and set me free and I got to come home,” Woodall recalls.
He reunited with Stephanie and their boys, Robbie and Lance.
Video in Patrick’s report shows Woodall in the yard, playing football with his sons.
“Oh, good spiral. Who taught you how to throw like that?” he jokes.
Patrick says Woodall poured his savings into a landscaping business, mowing lawns while also volunteering and getting involved in church.
“He does everything for us,” Stephanie says in the FOX 13 piece, clearly emotional.
By any normal measure, this was what we say we want: a man who committed a serious mistake, served hard time, then came home and rebuilt his life.
But the story didn’t end there.
A state prosecutor appealed the judge’s decision that freed him, arguing there was no procedural error after all.
Patrick explains that appellate courts ultimately agreed with the state.
Because the new version of 10-20-Life wasn’t retroactive, the sentence snapped back into place. Woodall was ordered to finish his original 20 years.
Patrick’s cameras were rolling as Woodall was resentenced.
His family screamed and cried in the courtroom as he was sent back to prison after 18 months of freedom.
Woodall still remembers that day vividly. “That day that I left that courtroom and I seen my sons crying in tears and my whole family screaming and wailing,” he tells Patrick, “God showed up for me that day.”
Life Moved On Without Him
Patrick notes that as Woodall returned to prison, everyone else’s life kept moving.
His prosecutor, Pam Bondi, moved up too.
Patrick reminds viewers that Bondi, who argued to send Woodall back, now leads the U.S. Justice Department as attorney general.
Her career advanced. His life was put back on pause.
Back in Central Florida, time reshaped Woodall’s personal life as well.
The pain of that last day in court took a toll on his relationship with Stephanie.
“I made the final decision to separate,” Woodall tells Patrick.
He says he could see it was hurting her, hurting him, and hurting their children to keep reliving that moment.
Meanwhile, Patrick reports that both of Woodall’s sons have grown into adulthood.
Lance joined the Marines and is stationed in Okinawa.
Robbie joined the Air Force and got married.
Those are milestones most parents dream of being there for.
Woodall wasn’t.
“I remember falling into tears because I realized I missed all those moments and you can’t get them back,” he tells Patrick.
Inside prison, Patrick says, Woodall is trying to make his remaining time count.
He’s taking classes to become a truck driver once he is released.
He also works in a palliative care unit, helping care for terminally ill inmates in their final days.
“Palliative care really taught me a lot,” he tells Patrick. “When you’re around people who pass away, it really makes you see how short life is.”
According to Patrick, Woodall is scheduled to be released in October 2026, finishing out the last year of his reinstated sentence.
What This Story Says About Crime, Punishment, And Change
What makes Patrick’s report stand out is that Woodall doesn’t talk like a typical “system is always wrong” case.
His view is complex, even conflicted.
“I’m smart on crime, too,” Woodall tells Patrick.
He says he wants police, prosecutors, judges, and corrections officers to have the tools they need to protect society.
At the same time, he clearly believes his extra nine years were unnecessary.
“I don’t believe I needed it,” he says of the full 20-year term. “The change started happening immediately in my life because of the fear.”
Patrick presses into this contradiction.
Without a harsh potential sentence, Woodall admits there might not have been that same fear.
“You can’t have the fear without having the reality of that being the sentence,” he acknowledges.
That’s the tension at the heart of every mandatory minimum debate.
In one breath, Woodall tells Patrick that prison “actually worked” for him.
In another, he points out that the law under which he’s still imprisoned doesn’t even exist in the same form anymore.
From the outside, it’s hard not to feel that something is off.
The state of Florida has admitted, through reforms, that 10-20-Life went too far in many cases.
Judges now have more discretion, exactly the kind that would have mattered in a case like his.
Yet because of timing and legal technicalities, Woodall’s life was locked to the older, harsher version.
Patrick’s reporting doesn’t pretend there was no victim.
Woodall himself says, “There was a victim in this.” A man was injured. A gun was fired in a chaotic, drunken fight that never should have happened.
But the story also shows what happens when the law changes in principle, yet doesn’t change for the real people already under its weight.
It leaves men like Robert Woodall living out the final years of sentences the state has effectively admitted were too rigid.
And that’s the uncomfortable space Craig Patrick leaves viewers in.
If we believe in being “smart on crime,” as Woodall now says he does, we have to decide whether justice is just about the letter of the old law – or about whether the punishment still makes sense once the law itself has moved on.
Raised in a small Arizona town, Kevin grew up surrounded by rugged desert landscapes and a family of hunters. His background in competitive shooting and firearms training has made him an authority on self-defense and gun safety. A certified firearms instructor, Kevin teaches others how to properly handle and maintain their weapons, whether for hunting, home defense, or survival situations. His writing focuses on responsible gun ownership, marksmanship, and the role of firearms in personal preparedness.
