California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Saddozai, A154894 (Cal. App. 2021):
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; 654, subd. (a) [where an act is "punishable in different ways by different provisions of law, . . . in no case shall the act . . . be punished under more than one provision"].) If the offense "involves more than a single acti.e., a course of conduct," we assess whether that conduct reflects a single or multiple intents and
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objectives. (People v. Corpening (2016) 2 Cal.5th 307, 311-312.) " 'If [a defendant] entertained multiple criminal objectives which were independent of and not merely incidental to each other, he may be punished 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. Leonard (2014) 228 Cal.App.4th 465, 499.) A trial court has broad latitude when determining whether section 654 applies, and we review its decision in the light most favorable to the respondent. (People v. Jones (2002) 103 Cal.App.4th 1139, 1143.)
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