California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Sandoval, F068485 (Cal. App. 2015):
"Section 654 precludes multiple punishment for a single act or omission, or an indivisible course of conduct." (People v. Deloza (1998) 18 Cal.4th 585, 591-592.) "'Whether a course of criminal conduct is divisible and therefore gives rise to more than one act within the meaning of section 654 depends on the intent and objective of the actor. If all of the offenses were incident to one objective, the defendant may be punished for any one of such offenses but not for more than one.'" (People v. Latimer (1993) 5 Cal.4th 1203, 1208.)
"'It is defendant's intent and objective, not the temporal proximity of his offenses, which determine whether the transaction is indivisible. [Citations.] ... [I]f all of the offenses were merely incidental to, or were the means of accomplishing or facilitating one objective, defendant may be found to have harbored a single intent and therefore may be punished only once. [Citation.]'" (People v. Hicks (1993) 6 Cal.4th 784, 789.) "On the other hand, if the evidence discloses that a defendant entertained multiple criminal objectives which were independent of and not merely incidental to each other, the trial court may impose punishment for independent violations committed in pursuit of each objective even though the violations shared common acts or were parts of an otherwise indivisible course of conduct." (People v. Liu (1996) 46 Cal.App.4th 1119, 1135.) And
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"'"a course of conduct divisible in time, although directed to one objective, may give rise to multiple violations and punishment. [Citations.]" [Citations.] This is particularly so where the offenses are temporally separated in such a way as to afford the defendant opportunity to reflect and to renew his or her intent before committing the next one, thereby aggravating the violation of public security or policy already undertaken. [Citation.]' [Citation.]" (People v. Andra (2007) 156 Cal.App.4th 638, 640.)
"The defendant's intent and objective present factual questions for the trial court, and its findings will be upheld if supported by substantial evidence." (People v. Andra, supra, 156 Cal.App.4th at p. 640.) "'We review the court's determination of [a defendant's] "separate intents" for sufficient evidence in a light most favorable to the judgment, and presume in support of the court's conclusion the existence of every fact the trier of fact could reasonably deduce from the evidence. [Citation.]' [Citation.]" (Id. at pp. 640-641.)
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