Neurosurgery is sufficiently reliable to satisfy the requirements of Federal Rule of Evidence 702 or comparable State rules for the admissibility of expert evidence.

United States v. Shryock, 342 F.3d 948, 982 (9th Cir. 2003) (upholding trial court's exclusion of Hernandez's statement under the residual hearsay exception because it did not meet the requirements of Rule 807 as "the....A statement not specifically covered by Federal Rule of Evidence 803 or 804 or by comparable State rules, but having equivalent circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness, is not excluded by the hearsay rule, if the court determines that (A) the statement is offered as evidence of a material fact; (B) the statement is more probative on the point for which it is offered than any other evidence which the proponent can procure through reasonable efforts; and (C) the general purposes of these rules and the interests of justice will best be served by admission of the statement into evidence.

United States v. Paccione, 949 F.2d 1183, 1201 (2d Cir. 1991) (upholding trial court's admission of character witnesses who testified on accused's honesty and integrity and exclusion of evidence relating to accused's devotion to his son suffering from cerebral palsy; held, "it was well within the court's...A criminal defendant may offer a pertinent trait of his or her character circumstantially -- to show the defendant's doing or non-doing of a specific act.

Fed. R. Evid. 609(b) ("Time limit. Evidence of a conviction under this rule is not admissible if a period of more than ten years has elapsed since the date of the conviction or of....Under federal law the conviction of a witness is generally inadmissible to impeach the witness if more than ten years has elapsed since the conviction or since the release of the witness from imprisonment for that conviction, whichever is later.