Rivas

A jury convicted defendants Valentin Navarro Rivas and Benjamin Puga Carrillo of the first degree murder of James Lopez and of *1414 firing a gun into an occupied vehicle. It also found true sentence enhancement allegations that Rivas used a gun and that both defendants committed the murder to benefit a criminal street gang. And it found that defendants were principals, either as the perpetrator or as an accomplice, in Rivas’s intentional firing of a gun into an occupied vehicle, resulting in Lopez’s death. (Pen. Code, §§ 186.22, subd. (b), 187, subd. (a), 246, 12022.5, subd. (a), 12022.53, subds. (d), (e).) The trial court sentenced each defendant to 50 years to life imprisonment.

On appeal, defendants claim that the trial court committed reversible error by providing improper jury instructions and by admitting certain evidence of gang activities that, they claim, violated their right to due process and, in some cases, was substantially more prejudicial than probative.

Although the trial was not free of problems, none of the contentions raised by defendants requires reversal of the judgments, and we will affirm them.

FACTS

Shortly before 2:00 p.m. on January 12,…