Author Description

This statutory and case supplement incorporates the latest changes to the Federal Rules of Evidence. It addresses proposed revisions to Rules 609(a)(1)(B) (raising the bar against evidence of past convictions offered to impeach a criminal defendant), 609(b) (defining the end point of that rule's ten-year period), and 801(d)(1)(A) (allowing admission for substantive purposes of any past inconsistent statement of a testifying witness). The supplement also presents proposed new Rule 707, which concerns machine-generated (and AI-generated) evidence. All these proposed changes appear along with Advisory Committee's Notes and explanatory editor's notes. The supplement also includes a side-by-side reprinting of the old (pre-2011), unrestyled Federal Rules of Evidence and the restyled rules to allow for ready comparison. Editor's notes point out those areas where the restyling project, contrary to its authors' claimed intentions, worked substantive changes to the rules. A new case supplement offers extensive case notes summarizing the Supreme Court's 2023 ruling in Samia v. United States, edited excerpts with the editor's afterthoughts of the Court's 2024 rulings in Smith v. Arizona and Diaz v. United States, and case notes addressing the Court's 2025 actions in Franklin v. New York and Humphreys v. Emmons.