Salazar

When a court may sentence on but one of two offenses arising from the same course of conduct, must it select the one carrying the greater punishment? No.

As the result of a purse snatching incident involving a single victim on July 7, 1986, Jesse Salazar pleaded guilty to assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury and robbery and admitted a prior felony conviction. Penal Code section 654 prohibited punishment for both crimes, and the court elected to sentence Salazar to the midterm of three years on the felony assault conviction. [1] It failed to impose any term for the robbery and the prior conviction.

Although the crimes of felony assault and robbery carry the same three-year midterm, the robbery offense would have required the mandatory imposition of a five-year enhancement for the prior robbery (Pen. Code, § 667, subd. (a)). [2] The same is not true of felonious assault which is not on the list of serious crimes described in Penal Code section 1192.7, subdivision (c), however. (1) (See fn. 3) Consequently, for purposes of this opinion we will treat robbery as the greater charge and felonious assault as the lesser. [3]

(2a) The district…