Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
Appeal from a judgment of the Superior Court of Orange County No. 07WF0166, Thomas M. Goethals, Judge. Affirmed as modified.
Richard Schwartzberg, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Gary W. Schons, Assistant Attorney General, Elizabeth S. Voorhies, Deputy Attorney General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
Before Rylaarsdam, Acting P. J., Aronson, J., and Ikola, J.
The only issue raised on appeal involves sentencing. The Attorney General concedes the superior court erred and we agree.
A jury convicted Merritt Llewellyen Sharp of residential burglary and possession of stolen property. Sharp was seen prying open the door of a motel room at the National Inn in Garden Grove. He was then seen about three miles away closing the lid on a dumpster at his family’s auto shop business where he worked. The victim’s briefcase and other valuables taken from the motel room were, within a couple of hours, retrieved by the police from the dumpster.
The superior court sentenced Sharp to 12 years in prison, calculated as follows: the upper term of six years on count one for residential burglary, three years on count two for possession of stolen property to be served concurrently with the burglary count, and six one-year terms for prior felony convictions that resulted in imprisonment to be served consecutively.
Sharp contends the superior court mistakenly imposed a concurrent sentence on the possession of stolen property count; he argues the court was required to stay imposition of the sentence instead. Even though Sharp was subject to multiple convictions for the offenses of burglary and possession of the stolen property taken from the room (see People v. Allen (1999) 21 Cal.4th 846, 865-866), it is well accepted that under Penal Code section 654 he cannot be subject to multiple punishments for those same offenses when they are committed during a continuous and indivisible course of conduct (see People v. Carr (1998) 66 Cal.App.4th 109, 113; People v. Landis (1996) 51 Cal.App.4th 1247, 1255; see also People v. Allen, supra, 21 Cal.4th at p. 867). Here no one disputes, and the record clearly supports, the conclusion that these offenses were part of a continuous course of conduct for which only one punishment could properly be imposed by the court.
The judgment is corrected by staying the sentence on count two for possession of stolen property and, as so modified, is affirmed. The clerk of the superior court is directed to prepare an amended abstract of judgment and to forward a certified copy of the amended abstract forthwith to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.