Does section 654 of the California Penal Code allow a defendant to be punished for each violation committed in pursuit of multiple goals?

California, United States of America


The following excerpt is from People v. Martinez, B249606 (Cal. App. 2014):

Penal Code section 654, subdivision (a), provides in pertinent part, "[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 therefore '"precludes multiple punishment for a single act or for a course of conduct comprising indivisible acts. 'Whether a course of criminal conduct is divisible . . . depends on the intent and objective of the actor.' [Citations.] '[I]f all 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.]" [Citation.]'" (People v. Jones (2002) 103 Cal.App.4th 1139, 1143.) "However, if the defendant harbored '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 indivisible course of conduct. [Citation.]'" (Ibid.) We review the trial court's implicit finding of multiple intent in the light most favorable to the finding. (Ibid.)

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