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.

I

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 *637 (c), however. Consequently, for purposes of this opinion we will treat robbery as the greater charge and felonious assault as the lesser.

The district attorney contends the trial court…