## Facts

- Two federal inmates, Lenny Urena and Gary Dennis, had a confrontation in prison on April 11, 2006, beginning when Dennis grabbed Urena and called him a “bitch,” after which they separated.
- Hours later, Urena attacked Dennis by surprise, striking him in the face and then continuing to strike him from behind as Dennis attempted to disengage.
- Another inmate, Nekis Atwater, joined the assault by kicking Dennis and punching him multiple times.
- Dennis suffered superficial injuries, including lacerations requiring stitches.
- A prison knife (“shank”) was recovered from underneath Urena’s shoulder after the altercation.
- Eyewitness accounts conflicted on whether Urena or Atwater wielded the shank, but Urena admitted the shank was his and that he held it during the fight.
- At trial, Urena argued (1) Atwater used the shank and Urena falsely confessed to avoid informing on Atwater, (2) self-defense based on prison-culture meaning of the earlier insult, and (3) Dennis might have been armed.
- The government presented Dennis’s treating physician, Dr. Jaime David, to testify about the nature and extent of Dennis’s injuries; Dr. David’s report suggested at least one injury was more consistent with a punch or fall than a knife wound.

## Issues

1. Whether the district court abused its discretion by refusing to instruct the jury on self-defense.
2. Whether limiting cross-examination of the treating physician to the nature and extent of injuries (and bias), and excluding questions on causation, violated the Confrontation Clause or was otherwise an abuse of discretion.
3. Whether the district court abused its discretion by refusing to allow the defense, mid-trial, to designate the treating physician as an expert on injury causation.
4. Whether the sentence was substantively unreasonable because the Guidelines calculation included criminal-history “recency points” later removed by amendment.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit affirmed the convictions and sentence.
- The district court did not abuse its discretion in refusing a self-defense instruction because the evidence supporting self-defense was speculative and insufficient for a rational jury to find in Urena’s favor.
- The limitation on cross-examining Dr. David about causation did not violate the Confrontation Clause and was within the court’s discretion because the government’s direct examination addressed only the nature and extent of injury, and Urena could still probe bias.
- The district court did not abuse its discretion in denying a mid-trial attempt to re-designate Dr. David as a defense expert on causation.
- The sentence was substantively reasonable even though it included recency points that were later eliminated from the Guidelines.

## Legal Principles

- A defendant is entitled to an instruction on a theory of defense only if there is enough supporting evidence for a rational jury to find for the defendant on that theory; speculation does not suffice.
- The Confrontation Clause guarantees an opportunity for effective cross-examination, not unrestricted cross-examination; trial courts may impose reasonable limits based on relevance and the scope of direct examination.
- A trial court may restrict expert testimony and deny late expert designations to manage trial fairness, including avoiding surprise and prejudice from untimely disclosure.
- A within-Guidelines (or Guidelines-informed) sentence may be substantively reasonable even if the Sentencing Commission later amends the Guidelines; subsequent nonretroactive changes do not, by themselves, make an earlier sentence unreasonable.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit upheld Urena’s assault-with-a-dangerous-weapon and prison-contraband convictions and affirmed his sentence, holding that the record did not support a self-defense instruction, the trial court’s limits on medical testimony were constitutionally and evidentially permissible, and later removal of Guidelines recency points did not render the sentence substantively unreasonable.


United States v. Urena, 659 F.3d 903 (9th Cir. 2011)