Does a trial court's instructional error on the "natural and probable consequences" rule deny a defendant due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment?

Defendant Bray contends that the trial court's instructional error denied her due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Because the error violated a federal constitutional right, she contends, the error was either "reversible per se" (People v. Cummings (1993) 4 Cal.4th 1233, 1314-1315, 18 Cal.Rptr.2d 796, 850 P.2d 1 [failure to instruct on four of the five elements of robbery reversible per se] ), or was prejudicial under the "harmless-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt" test of Chapman v. California (1967) 386 U.S. 18, 24, 87 S.Ct. 824, 828, 17 L.Ed.2d 705. We disagree. As we shall explain, the trial court's failure to identify and describe target crimes when instructing on the "natural and probable consequences" rule did not violate defendant's federal due process rights.

Bray likens the instructional error here to a failure to instruct the jury on certain elements of the crime charged. (See United States v. Gaudin (1995) 515 U.S. 506, ----, 115 S.Ct. 2310, 2313, 132 L.Ed.2d 444 [federal Constitution requires "criminal convictions to rest upon a jury determination that the defendant is guilty of every element of the crime ... charged...."].) Bray contends that under the "natural and probable consequences" doctrine, the elements of target offenses aided and abetted are "functionally" [14 Cal.4th 271] elements of the crime actually charged. Thus, she reasons, by instructing the jury on the "natural and probable consequences" doctrine as to the charge of murder, without also instructing on the elements of any target crime originally contemplated, the trial court in effect failed to instruct the jury on all of the elements of the murder she was charged with aiding and abetting.