Can a person be convicted of more than one crime arising out of the same act or course of conduct?

Section 654 provides in relevant part, "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." ( 654, subd. (a); see People v. Correa (2012) 54 Cal.4th 331, 337 [" 'In general, a person may be convicted of, although not punished for, more than one crime arising out of the same act or course of conduct' "].) Thus, by its plain terms, section 654 bars multiple punishments of a single, physical act or omission.

Our Supreme Court expanded the scope of section 654 in Neal v. State of California (1960) 55 Cal.2d 11 when it stated: "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." (Id. at p. 19.) The court explained in a later case, "It is defendant's intent and objective, not the temporal proximity of his offenses, which determine whether the transaction is indivisible. [Citations.] We have traditionally observed that if 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.] [] If, on the other hand, defendant harbored 'multiple criminal objectives,' which were independent of and not merely incidental to each other, he may be punished for each statutory violation committed in

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