P. v. Nelson
Based on Robert Nelson’s participation in a prison beating inflicted on a fellow inmate, the jury convicted him of assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury (Pen. Code, § 245, subd. (a)(4); all further undesignated statutory references are to this code) and active participation in a criminal street gang (§ 186.22, subd. (a)), and found true the alleged gang enhancement (§ 186.22, subd. (b)) on the assault charge. The trial court sentenced Nelson to four years in prison. He challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to support the jury’s conclusion the primary activities of the white supremacist group to which he belonged qualified it as a criminal street gang. In particular, he argues evidence of relatively few specific instances of crimes committed by individual gang members was insufficient to establish those offenses as primary activities of a 100-member group, but a gang expert’s opinion alone is enough under Supreme Court precedent to decode the gang’s p
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