In what circumstances will a defendant be convicted of robbery and as an aider and abettor of the crime?

In People v. Nguyen (1988) 204 Cal.App.3d 181, the defendant and an accomplice robbed a market. The accomplice took the clerk into a bathroom, removed the money from his pockets and forced him to lie on the floor. The defendant opened the cash register and shouted a Vietnamese battle cry. The accomplice kicked the clerk and shot him in the back. The clerk survived. The defendant was convicted of robbery and attempted murder as an aider and abettor. The appellate court upheld imposition of separate punishment for both crimes. It reasoned that the shooting constituted an act of gratuitous violence against a helpless and unresisting victim that was sufficiently divisible from the robbery to justify multiple punishments. (Id. at pp. 189-193.)

As in People v. Nguyen, supra, 204 Cal.App.3d 181, the attack on Tikiyie was an extreme and gratuitous act of violence that went beyond what could reasonably be characterized as necessary to intimidate Tikiyie and convince her not to testify against Yvonne. The evidence supports the trial court's implied finding that that the assault was a gratuitous act of violence intended, in part, to hurt Tikiyie and it was not incidental to the witness intimidation. Under the circumstances presented here, we conclude that the assault is sufficiently divisible from the witness intimidation to permit imposition of separate punishment for both crimes. (Id. at p. 193.)