California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Brumley, Los Angeles County Super. Ct. No. YA075498, NO.B223275 (Cal. App. 2011):
With slight modification due to an error in the sentence that is addressed in Section II below, we follow the procedure set forth in People v. Hustead (1999) 74 Cal.App.4th 410, 419: "[W]e will remand the case to the trial court to conduct an in camera hearing on the discovery motion. If there is no discoverable information in the file, then the trial court is ordered to reinstate the original judgment and sentence [to stay the sentence on count 2], and the judgment is ordered affirmed. [Citation.] If, however, there is relevant discoverable information in the officer[s'] file.... appellant should be given an opportunity to determine if the information would have led to any relevant, admissible evidence that he could have presented at trial. [Citation.] If appellant is able to demonstrate that he was prejudiced by the denial of the discovery, the trial court should order a new trial. If appellant is unable to show any prejudice, then the conviction
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is ordered reinstated, [the sentence is ordered modified to stay the sentence on count 2], and the judgment is ordered affirmed." (See also People v. Gaines (2009) 46 Cal.4th 172, 181.)
Penal Code section 654, subdivision (a) provides, "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 divisibility of a course of conduct depends upon the intent and objective of the defendant. If all the offenses are incidental to one objective, the defendant may be punished for any one of them, but not for more than one. On the other hand, if the evidence discloses that a defendant entertained multiple criminal objectives which were independent of and not merely incidental to each other, 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." (People v. Liu (1996) 46 Cal.App.4th 1119, 1135.)
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