Can a defendant be punished for each violation of Section 6542 of the California Penal Code?

Section 654² forbids multiple punishment of the same act. Punishment for an act is limited to the sentence that provides the longest potential imprisonment. Section 654 "is intended to ensure that defendant is punished 'commensurate with his culpability.' " (People v. Harrison (1989) 48 Cal.3d 321, 335.) Thus, section 654 applies where a single act underlies the charged crimes and "has been extended to cases in which there are several offenses committed during 'a course of conduct deemed to be indivisible in time.' " (Ibid.) "It is defendant's intent and objective, not the temporal proximity of his offenses, which determine whether the transaction is indivisible." (Ibid.) If the defendant had only a single intent and all of the offenses were incidental to that one objective, he may be punished only once. If, on the other hand, he harbored multiple criminal objectives, he may be punished for each statutory violation " 'even though the

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violations shared common acts or were parts of an otherwise indivisible course of conduct.' " (Ibid.)