Whether the admission of irrelevant and inflammatory gang evidence prejudiced the petitioner

QUESTION PRESENTED In California, evidence of other gang members’ commission of qualifying predicate offenses is relevant to prove criminal street gang enhancements, but the predicate offenses need not be “gang related.” At Petitioner’s trial for assault, criminal threats, threatening a witness, and false imprisonment, the prosecutor elicited the underlying details of other gang members’ violent offenses on the ground that such evidence was required to prove that the predicate offenses were “gang cases.” Was Petitioner prejudiced by trial counsel’s inexplicable failure to challenge the admission of this irrelevant and inflammatory gang evidence? 1