Federal Rule of Evidence 901(b)(7) and comparable State rules provide that a writing may be authenticated by evidence that the writing is authorized by law to be recorded or filed and is in fact recorded or filed in a public office; and a purported public record, report, statement, or data compilation, in any form, may be authenticated by evidence that it is from the public office where items of this nature are kept.

Huddleston v. United States, 485 U.S. 681, pin? (1988) (dictum: Rule 404 "applies in both civil and criminal cases").The prohibition against circumstantial use of character -- the use of character or disposition to show conduct on a particular occasion -- applies in trials of civil actions.

Cf. United States v. John, 309 F.3d 298, 303-305 (5th Cir. 2002) (reversing conviction and remanding for further proceedings because the trial court erred in refusing to instruct the jury that the character evidence might create a reasonable doubt as to accused's guilt).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. 602 advisory committee's note ("It will be observed that the rule [requiring personal knowledge] is in fact a specialized application of the provisions of Rule 104(b) on conditional relevancy.").A person has the personal knowledge that a witness must have if and only if the evidence is sufficient to permit a reasonable trier of fact to conclude that the witness personally perceived the matter. The preliminary question of personal knowledge is governed by the standard of whether the evidence is sufficient to allow a reasonable person to conclude that the person has personal knowledge; the applicable standard is not the more demanding preponderance of the evidence standard.