Can a defendant who has been convicted of multiple offences under section 654 of the California Criminal Code, stay execution of one of the crimes?

Section 654 provides in pertinent part: "(a) An 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." The statute does not prohibit multiple convictions for the same conduct, only multiple punishments. (People v. Monarrez (1998) 66 Cal.App.4th 710, 713.) "In such a case, the proper procedure is to stay execution of sentence on one of the offenses." (Ibid.)

In any section 654 inquiry, the court must initially ascertain the defendant's objective and intent. (People v. Porter (1987) 194 Cal.App.3d 34, 38.) " 'If he 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

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