What is the effect of section 654, subdivision (a) of the California Criminal Code when a defendant is convicted of a charge under the same law?

Section 654, subdivision (a) provides in relevant part, "An act or omission that is punishable in different ways by different provisions of law shall be punished under the provision that provides for the longest potential term of imprisonment, but in no case shall the act or omission be punished under more than one provision." The purpose of this statute "is to insure that a defendant's punishment will be commensurate with his culpability." (People v. Perez (1979) 23 Cal.3d 545, 551.) Section 654 "prohibits multiple sentences where the defendant commits different acts that violate different statutes but the acts comprise an indivisible course of conduct engaged in with a single intent and objective." (People v. Alvarado (2001) 87 Cal.App.4th 178, 196.) But where a defendant acts with "multiple criminal objectives that [are] independent of and not merely incidental to each other, then he may be punished for the independent violations committed in pursuit of each objective even though the violations were parts of an otherwise indivisible course of conduct." (Ibid.)