Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

He's facing lots of state prison time. What are you going to do about it? Have you retained an attorney for him or are you going to leave him to the public defender to enter a guilty plea?

Close to his lifetime in prison if convicted.

The only advice to him is:

Of course you can fight the charges. When arrested or charged with any crime, the proper questions are, can any evidence obtained in a test, search or confession be used against you, and can you be convicted, and what can you do? Raise all possible defenses with whatever admissible and credible witnesses, evidence, facts and sympathies are available for legal arguments, for evidence suppression or other motions, or at trial. There is no magic wand to wave and make it all disappear. Not exactly a do it yourself project in court for someone who does not know how to effectively represent himself against a professional prosecutor intending to convict and jail you. If you don't know how to do these things effectively, then hire an attorney that does, who will try to get a reduction or other decent outcome through plea bargain, or take it to trial if appropriate. If serious about hiring counsel to help in this, and if this is in SoCal courts, feel free to contact me.

It depends on how the DA charges the case - if it's charged as attempted murder with premeditation, he's looking at life in prison (with a parole eligibility date of 7 years, so essentially 7-life). They can run the additional counts consecutive and the firearm can add substantial time - again, depending on how it's charged. There is the "10, 20, life" firearm enhancement under Penal Code section 12022.53 that adds 10 years for the "use" of a firearm (and that can include just brandishing), 20 years for firing it (even if nobody is hit) and 25-life on top of any sentence if a person is hit and suffers great bodily injury.

What he's actually facing depends mostly on how it's charged, his involvement, his record (or lack thereof) and most importantly.... what they can actually prove against him. There are many lesser charges to attempted murder that can either be plead to or as lesser included offenses for a jury to consider.