Is Section 654 of the California Criminal Code "indivisible in time" provisions?

California, United States of America


The following excerpt is from People v. Dhillon, F072634 (Cal. App. 2017):

provision." ( 654, subd. (a).) Moreover, "because [section 654] is intended to ensure that defendant is punished 'commensurate with his culpability' [citation], its protection has been extended to cases in which there are several offenses committed during 'a course of conduct deemed to be indivisible in time.' [Citation.]" (People v. Harrison (1989) 48 Cal.3d 321, 335.) "It is defendant's intent and objective, not the temporal proximity of his offenses, which determine whether the transaction is indivisible." (Ibid.) "[I]f 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." (Ibid.) "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 pursuit of each objective, 'even though the violations shared common acts or were parts of an otherwise indivisible course of conduct.' [Citation.]" (Ibid.)

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