Can a defendant be punished under section 654 of the California Code of Criminal Code for a single crime?

Pursuant to section 654, subdivision (a), "[a]n act or omission that is punishable in different ways by different provisions of law shall be punished under the provision that provides for the longest potential term of imprisonment, but in no case shall the act or omission be punished under more than one provision . . . ." "Section 654 precludes multiple punishment for a single act or for a course of conduct comprising indivisible acts." (People v. Evers (1992) 10 Cal.App.4th 588, 602.) "'Whether a course of criminal conduct is divisible . . . depends on the intent and objective of the actor.' [Citations.]" (Ibid.) "'"If all the offenses were merely incidental to, or were the means of accomplishing or facilitating one objective, [the] defendant may be found to have harbored a single intent and therefore may be punished only once." [Citation.]' [Citation.]" (People v. Spirlin (2000) 81 Cal.App.4th 119, 129.) "If, however, the defendant had multiple or simultaneous objectives, independent of and not merely incidental to each other, the defendant may be punished for each violation committed in pursuit of each objective even though the violations share common acts or were parts of an otherwise

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indivisible course of conduct. [Citation.]" (People v. Cleveland (2001) 87 Cal.App.4th 263, 267-268.)

"Whether section 654 applies in a given case is a question of fact for the trial court, which is vested with broad latitude in making its determination. [Citations.] Its findings will not be reversed on appeal if there is any substantial evidence to support them. [Citations.] We review the trial court's determination in the light most favorable to the respondent and presume the existence of every fact the trial court could reasonably deduce from the evidence. [Citation.]" (People v. Jones (2002) 103 Cal.App.4th 1139, 1143.)