Court Opinion

ID: 9737756
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:33:54.629611+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:01.121909
License: Public Domain

ROTH, P. J., Dissenting.
The majority in Neal v. State of California, 55 Cal.2d 11, at p. 19 [9 Cal.Rptr. 607, 357 P.2d 839], holds: “Few if any crimes, however, are the result of a single physical act. ‘ Section 654 has been applied not only where there was but one ‘ ‘ act ’ ’ in the ordinary sense . . . but also where a course of conduct violated more than one statute and the problem was whether it comprised a divisible transaction which could be punished under more than one statute within the meaning of section 654.’ (People v. Brown, supra, 591.)”
The cases which follow Neal including People v. Ford, 65 Cal.2d 41 [52 Cal.Rptr. 228, 416 P.2d 132], cited by the majority, reiterate that “. . . the meaning of section 654 depends upon his [defendant’s] intent and the determination whether he committed both offenses incident to one objective.” (People v. Ford, supra, p. 48.)
It appears, therefore, that when a course of criminal *664conduct gives rise to multiple crimes, the only question of fact to be determined by the trial court is whether the “. . . intent and the determination ...” of a defendant who commits more than one offense in the perpetration of a crime, such as robbery, was embarked upon a course of criminal conduct “. . . incident to one objective. ...”
In every comparable case in which a trial court by its judgment imposes sentence for more than one crime, it has impliedly found that the criminal has consummated his “one objective” and committed an additional crime or crimes and that, therefore, section 654 of the Penal Code is not applicable.
All of the cases, including Neal, wherein a defendant was convicted and punished for more than one crime in the trial court, dealt with situations which necessarily involved an implied finding by the trial court that the crimes were divisible from the one objective. In Neal, however, the court nevertheless ignores such implied finding and holds that punishment must be confined to the crime which was the criminal’s “one objective.” It seems, therefore, that in spite of a trial court’s finding that the application of section 654 becomes a question of law, specifically, I presume, the question is whether the implied finding of divisibility is supported by the evidence.
The cases cited by the majority, with the possible exception of B.ought on, were clearly divisible on the facts. On the naked facts the distinction between Houghton and the case at bench is, I concede, sensitive, but when sound inferences are added to the evidence in Houghton, the distinction, I think is solid. In Houghton, the victim was told to turn his back to “move up a little higher ...” and reassured he would not be harmed. He was then shot. This additional evidence tends to prove a subjective calculated intent to commit a separate crime on the assumption that the robbery having been consummated, the criminal decided to do away with the only witness to his crime.
The facts at bench show one continuous sequence of action. They affirmatively show the robbery had not been completed. Appellant had made a demand for the whereabouts of the floor safe, showing that his “one objective” was to rob the hardware store by obtaining money from the cash register, the owner’s wallet, the floor safe and from any other source. His single objective was to obtain all the money available. Further, appellant had not extricated himself from the robbery. (Peo*665ple v. Kendrick, 56 Cal.2d 71, 90 [14 Cal.Rptr. 13, 363 P.2d 13]; People v. Beghtel, 164 Cal.App.2d 294, 297 [330 P.2d 444].1
Any robbery is an assault, and an armed robbery is always an assault with a deadly weapon irrespective of whether a weapon is discharged accidentally or because the victim attempted to interfere with the progress of the criminal act or with the “get away” of the robber. Since the victim in this case did pursue the robber even though shot in the arm, either of the latter two inferences are anything but illusory. In short, in the case at bench, there is no extra evidence other than the discharge of a gun to support a finding of divisibility.
I t.binlr, too, that there is no societal advantage in imposing an additional felony sentence for a separate felony which is predicated on an implied finding, illusory and vague, of a separate, calculated and objective criminal intent to commit an assault divisible from the robbery. If the victim in the ease at bench were a highly sensitive person, robbed at gunpoint, and the weapon had not been discharged or discharged in the air, it is not improbable that the mental, physical and emotional trauma suffered by the victim as a result of the experience, would cause actual physical, emotional and general psychiatric damage, infinitely more severe in its consequences than the gunshot wound inflicted upon the victim in the case at bench. In the assumed situation there could be no question but that there was a single crime committed, to wit: robbery, and there would be more reason for the application of the principle that the punishment should fit the crime, than in the case at bench.
I have difficulty in the absence of evidence other than the discharge of a gun in the perpetration of an armed robbery, in reconciling the mandate of section 654, as it has been specifically applied by our Supreme Court, with the vague and illusory distinctions between the implied finding that criminal intent is inherent in respect of the perpetration of any and every crime and the finding here separately made by the trial court, approved by the majority, of a subjective, calculated *666intent within appellant to commit an assault with a deadly weapon, as no part of his one objective, to commit a robbery.
I would vacate the judgment as to count one.
Appellant’s petition for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied November 2, 1966.

The court says in Beghtel, at p. 297: “As stated in People v. Raucho, 8 Cal.App.2d 655, 664 [47 P.2d 1108], ‘. . . the perpetration of a robbery is not completed the moment the stolen property is in the possession of the robbers. Bobbery, a combination of the crime of assault with that of larceny, includes, as does larceny, the element of asportation, and this taking away is a transaction which continues as the perpetrators depart from the place where the property was seized. ’ ’ ’