Error and/or relief
The court should have stayed the sentence on count 3 under section 654.
First Holding:
Section 654(a) provides that an act or omission that is punishable in different ways by different provisions of law may be punished under either of such provisions, but in no case shall the act or omission be punished under more than one provision. The statute is intended to ensure that the defendant is punished commensurate with his culpability. It expressly prohibits separate punishment for two crimes based on the same act, but has been interpreted to also preclude multiple punishment for two or more crimes occurring within the same course of conduct pursuant to a single intent.
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.
However, the temporal proximity of the two offenses is insufficient by itself to establish that they were incident to a single objective. If the defendant 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 an otherwise indivisible course of conduct. Furthermore, multiple crimes are not one transaction where the defendant had a chance to reflect between offenses and each offense created a new risk of harm.
Authority:
People v. Harrison (1989) 48 Cal.3d 321, 335
People v. Vargas (2014) 59 Cal.4th 635, 642
People v. Capistrano (2014) 59 Cal.4th 830, 885
People v. Rodriguez (2009) 47 Cal.4th 501, 507, overruled in part on another ground in People v. Hardy (2018) 5 Cal.5th 56 at pp. 103–104
People v. Jackson (2016) 1 Cal.5th 269, 354
People v. Porter (1987) 194 Cal.App.3d 34, 38
People v. Beamon (1973) 8 Cal.3d 625, 639
People v. Tom (2018) 22 Cal.App.5th 250, 260
People v. Lopez (2011) 198 Cal.App.4th 698, 717
People v. Felix (2001) 92 Cal.App.4th 905, 915
Second Holding:
Under the facts of this case, the court should have stayed the sentence on count 3. We may modify the judgment on review to reflect the sentence is stayed. In the absence of any other errors requiring remand, we exercise our discretion to do so.
Authority:
PEN 1260
People v. Alford (2010) 180 Cal.App.4th 1463, 1473
People v. Flores (2022) 77 Cal.App.5th 420, 453 [we need not remand a matter when it would be an idle act wasteful of judicial resources]