EAST MANATEE -- Brenda Haskins was watching TV when a bullet tore into her home, shattering a glass door and slamming into a kitchen cabinet. She crawled to a neighbor's house, fearing she was a target. Sheriff's deputies raced to the neighborhood.

The shooter was not a sniper but a Naples woman who had fired three 9 mm rounds into the woods from the backyard of her mother's home. Adrienne M. Mitchell was charged with unlawfully shooting a gun in public.

Mitchell, 22, was punished with probation and community service. She apologized, telling deputies she could have killed someone.

Shooting a gun in public is a crime in many scenarios, and the Mitchell case reveals how a shot into the woods can terrify a neighbor on the other side. Haskins' home in River Club is less than a mile from where the gun was fired. She never heard the shot.

"When you shoot a gun, the bullet has to go somewhere," says Haskins, 53, who was near her kitchen that evening in August 2006. "Common sense has to enter into it."

Prosecutors are aggressive in filing charges against shooters who fire in backyards. Allowing residents to shoot in yards is a threat to public safety, the state says.

But applying the public-shooting laws to all backyards is dangerous because yards are not public, says a defense attorney in Bradenton who is challenging the law. A court battle in Manatee County seeks to resolve the issue. The sides will square off this week in court.

In the past two years, only a handful of people have been charged in Manatee County for shooting a gun in public. The cases have been brought against shooters in neighborhoods.

In one case, the state dropped the charges against a Bradenton man who fired a shotgun defending his home and a friend from an intruder.

In a pending case, Marlon Castellanos fired two shots in his backyard in the 1500 block of 19th Avenue West in Bradenton. He told police he was upset about losing a soccer game.

Castellanos, 32, was booked on the charge of unlawfully shooting a gun in public. But the state recently dropped the charge and applied a different one: a Bradenton ordinance that makes it a crime to shoot a gun anywhere in the city except at a range and in self-defense.

The ordinance is more restrictive than the state law.

A homeowner, the state law says, is allowed to fire a gun on private property as long as the bullet does not cross over a house or over a public street. Florida's public-shooting law does not address a shooter's distance from one house to another.

In Ellenton, Joe Forestandi's home is hundreds of feet from Ellenton-Gillette Road and from his neighbors' houses. A forest begins where Forestandi's backyard ends. There is undeveloped land on the other side of the woods.

Forestandi, 36, is being prosecuted for shooting a handgun behind his home. He says he fired once into the ground. The state says there is no evidence to prove what happened to the bullet.

That is in contrast to the case against Mitchell, the Naples woman who fired into woods in East Manatee. The bullet she fired struck a home.

Sheriff's deputies were in Forestandi's neighborhood investigating a burglary early one morning in February when officers heard a shot.

"Now, when you saw Mr. Forestandi, he was in his backyard, correct?" Forestandi's attorney, Mark Lipinski, asked a sheriff's deputy in a deposition last month.

"That's correct," the deputy, Willie Finklea, said.

"He wasn't in a public place, was he?" the attorney continued.

"Not according to that statute, not that way, no," Finklea responded.

Finklea says Forestandi appeared drunk. But the state did not file a charge of shooting while intoxicated.

But that charge is in play and could be filed if the state drops the public-shooting accusation against Forestandi, who has denied being impaired when he fired his 9 mm handgun.

Finklea says Forestandi's speech was slurred and his breath smelled like alcohol. Officers found five or so beer cans in the home. But Finklea did not ask Forestandi when the beer had been consumed.

Proving that Forestandi was intoxicated when he fired the shot would be challenging for the state.

The easier charge to prove -- the public-shooting allegation -- is turning out to be the hardest one to defend.

Haskins says she wants shooters to think twice before pulling the trigger.

The emotional trauma brought by the bullet that ripped into her home has faded. The fact someone was charged quickly, and punished, eased her nerves.

Just last week, Haskins got a check in the mail, compensation for the damage the bullet caused.