Does section 654 of the California Criminal Code require a concurrent or concurrent sentence for a defendant convicted of a series of crimes committed at the same time under different criminal objectives?

Under California law, it is the defendant's intent and objective that determines whether the course of conduct is indivisible. Thus, 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." ' " (People v. Le (2006) 136 Cal.App.4th 925, 931.) Moreover, because section 654 prohibits multiple punishments, not multiple convictions, its proscription extends to include both concurrent and consecutive sentences. (In re Adams (1975) 14 Cal.3d 629, 636.)

Section 654 does not apply when the evidence discloses that a defendant entertained multiple criminal objectives independent of each other. (People v. Liu (1996) 46 Cal.App.4th 1119, 1134.) In that case, "the trial court may impose punishment 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." (Ibid.)

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