Does the Attorney General have to be held to account for errors made by Respondent in the context of Section 654 of the California Criminal Code?

Although the Attorney General has conceded error under similar circumstances in at least two other cases,³ respondent does not do so here. Respondent relies on the well-settled rule that a defendant may be convicted of (although not punished for ( 654)),⁴ any number of "offenses" or "crimes" arising out of a single act or course of conduct, so long as none of the convictions are based on necessarily included offenses. While that is of course the rule in California, cases upon which respondent relies did not address the issue presented herewhether defendant was indeed charged with separate "offenses" or "crimes," or was instead (as defendant claims) charged with committing the same offense in two different ways. For example, in People v. Reed (2006) 38 Cal.4th 1224, defendant was charged with, and convicted of, (1) being a felon in possession of a firearm, (2) carrying a concealed firearm, and (3) carrying a loaded firearm while in a public place, based on defendant's possession of a single automatic pistol on a single occasion. (Id. at p. 1226.) In upholding defendant's convictions, the court stated that "[t]he

Page 6