Appendix C — Wisconsin & federal evidence law primer

This appendix is a reference, not legal advice. Full citations live in research/05_fre707_and_ai_evidence_law.md. Receiver reading path: Read this appendix alongside Chapter 3 (FRE primer) and before any hearing at which a Canon attestation will be offered. Chapters 3 and 26 both map Canon fields to the admissibility questions addressed here. ## Federal Rules of Evidence — primary articles - FRE 901 (Authentication). § 901(a) general standard; § 901(b)(4) distinctive characteristics; § 901(b)(9) process or system. - FRE 902 (Self-authentication). § 902(13) — certified records generated by an electronic process or system; § 902(14) certified data copied from electronic device, storage medium, or file. - FRE 1001–1003 (Best evidence). - FRE 803, 804 (Hearsay exceptions). § 803(6) records of regularly conducted activity. - FRE 702 (Expert testimony). Amended December 1, 2023 to clarify the Rule 702(d) "reliably applied" standard. - FRE 703 (Bases of expert opinion). - Proposed FRE 707 (Machine-generated evidence). Public comment closed Feb 16, 2026. Earliest possible effective date: Dec 1, 2027. Not law as of May 2026. ## Daubert / Kumho framework - Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993). - Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137 (1999). - Five non-exhaustive factors: testability, peer review/publication, error rate, controlling standards, general acceptance. - Post-Loomis four-question variant for ML expert testimony: independent testing, quantified error rate, acceptable error rate, reliable application. ## Recent federal case law on AI-assisted submissions - Mata v. Avianca, Inc., 678 F. Supp. 3d 443 (S.D.N.Y. 2023). FRCP 11 sanctions for fabricated ChatGPT citations. - Park v. Kim, No. 22-2057 (2d Cir. Jan. 30, 2024). Second Circuit precedent — FRCP 11 reaches AI hallucinations without a supplemental local rule. - Johnson v. Dunn, 792 F. Supp. 3d 1241 (N.D. Ala. July 23, 2025). Public reprimand, disqualification, state-bar referral, mandatory client/court notification. - Kohls v. Ellison, No. 24-CV-3754, 2025 WL 66514 (D. Minn. Jan. 10, 2025). "Personal, nondelegable responsibility" to verify AI-assisted expert materials. - Concord Music Group, Inc. v. Anthropic PBC, No. 24-CV-03811-EKL, 2025 WL 1482734 (N.D. Cal. May 23, 2025). One hallucinated paragraph "infected the credibility of the entire declaration." - Ferlito v. Harbor Freight Tools USA, Inc., No. CV 20-5615, 2025 WL 1181699 (E.D.N.Y. Apr. 23, 2025). AI permissible as a verification tool; impermissible as a substitute for expert judgment. ## Wisconsin-specific authority - 2011 Wis. Act 2 — adopted Daubert standard via Wis. Stat. § 907.02(1). - § 904.01 — definition of relevant evidence: "evidence having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence." Parallel to FRE 401. - § 904.03 — exclusion of relevant evidence on grounds of prejudice, confusion, or waste of time. Court may exclude if probative value is substantially outweighed by unfair prejudice, confusion of issues, misleading the jury, undue delay, waste of time, or needless cumulative evidence. Parallel to FRE 403. - § 905.01 — privilege recognized by constitution, statute, or court rule. Wisconsin privileges include attorney-client (§ 905.03), physician-patient (§ 905.04), psychotherapist-patient (§ 905.04), and clergy (§ 905.06). No general "self-critical analysis" privilege. - § 907.02 — expert testimony; Daubert standard. - § 909.01 — general authentication. - § 909.015(8) — process or system illustration (parallel to FRE 901(b)(9)). - § 909.015(4) — distinctive characteristics. - § 908.03(6) — records of regularly conducted activity (parallel to FRE 803(6)). - § 910.02 — best evidence rule. - § 968.31 — wiretap; one-party consent recording is lawful in Wisconsin. A participant to a wire, electronic, or oral communication may record that communication without the knowledge of the other party. Recordings made by a party to the conversation are not intercepted communications within the meaning of the statute. - §§ 19.31–19.39 — Open Records Law. - § 48.78 — child welfare confidentiality; § 48.78(2) — parent-party access rights. The statute prohibits disclosure of records maintained by a child welfare agency except to persons enumerated in § 48.78(2)(a)–(i). In a TPR proceeding, a Canon-tagged DHS record carries this confidentiality obligation regardless of its technical integrity. Confirm that production to opposing counsel or the court falls within a statutory exception before offering the exhibit. The Canon attestation's RBAC tier (pii_tier column) does not substitute for statutory authorization. ### Wisconsin cases - State v. Loomis, 881 N.W.2d 749 (Wis. 2016). Algorithmic risk scores at sentencing; not determinative; no constitutional right to source code. Wisconsin precedent. - State v. Giese, 2014 WI App 92, 356 Wis. 2d 796, 854 N.W.2d 687. Daubert gatekeeping standard. - State v. Mader, 2023 WI App 35, 408 Wis. 2d 632, 993 N.W.2d 761. Improper-vouching limits on expert testimony. ## Authenticating digital communications under FRE 901 FRE 901(a): "the proponent must produce evidence sufficient to support a finding that the item is what the proponent claims it is." Two subsections govern iMessages and Gmail exports: FRE 901(b)(1) — testimony of a witness with knowledge. The custodian or another person with personal knowledge testifies that the item is what it is claimed to be. For iMessages: the account holder testifies the messages were extracted from their device, that the phone number or Apple ID belongs to them, and that the export reflects the thread as they saw it. For Gmail: the account holder testifies the export was produced by Google Takeout from their account on a known date. FRE 901(b)(9) — evidence about a process or system. The proponent describes a process or system and shows that it produces an accurate result. Meridian-Cannon satisfies this subsection directly: the system's intake worker computes a SHA-256 hash of the raw source file before any processing; the sealed Attestation records that hash; and the seven-step walk protocol re-derives it independently. A witness with knowledge of the pipeline can testify that any artifact carrying a valid Canon signature was produced by a process that has been tested and whose output is byte-identical to the original. Practical note on metadata. Courts have treated metadata (timestamp, phone number, account ID) as part of the authentication showing rather than as a separate hearsay problem. United States v. Browne, 834 F.3d 403 (3d Cir. 2016) (Facebook messages authenticated through combination of profile photo, account name, and content corroboration). Corroboration through content — references to events only the participants would know — strengthens the showing. Wisconsin parallel. Wis. Stat. § 909.015(8) mirrors FRE 901(b)(9). The showing is the same: describe the system, demonstrate it works, tie the output to the original. ## Chain of custody for Meridian-Cannon exhibits: attorney checklist An attorney preparing to introduce a Meridian-Cannon exhibit at a hearing should confirm the following before the proceeding: - Source hash on receipt. Confirm the source_hash field in the Attestation was computed before any processing step ran. The intake timestamp and hash should precede any acquisition_id row in the audit log. - Unbroken audit chain. Run meridian-canon walk <attestation-file> and confirm exit code 0. The walker re-derives the chain hash and verifies the signature; any break in the custody chain produces a specific error message identifying which step failed. - Signing key is on record. The Ed25519 public key embedded in the Attestation should match the key stored in the project's keychain entry (or the exported PEM in the repository). Confirm the key has not been rotated since the exhibit was sealed; if it has, confirm the prior key is recorded in the key-rotation log. - No post-seal mutations. The sealed_at timestamp in the Attestation should precede any subsequent processing rows for the same acquisition. If enrichment workers ran after sealing, those runs appear in the audit log with their own hashes and do not modify the sealed artifact. - Privilege and redaction record. If any content was redacted before production, confirm a redactions row exists with the privilege assertion FK, the date, and the author. The produced version carries a separate hash; the original is preserved and its hash is recorded. - Opposing counsel can verify independently. The sealed Attestation is a self-contained JSON file. Opposing counsel (or the court) can run the public reference verifier without access to this system. Include the verifier invocation in the exhibit cover sheet: meridian-canon walk <file> or point to the standalone verifier artifact if the nora-canon-verifier PyPI package has shipped. ## Ethics and best-practice authority - ABA Formal Opinion 512 (July 29, 2024). First ABA formal opinion on GenAI. - ABA Resolution 604 (Feb 2023). - The Sedona Conference, "Navigating AI in the Judiciary" (Feb 2025). - NIST AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF 1.0) (Jan 2023, with companion playbooks). - EDRM AI Guidelines. ## EU overlay - Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (EU AI Act). High-risk AI in administration of justice (Annex III, Point 8) compliance required by Aug 2, 2026. - GDPR Articles 5(1)(b), 6(1)(c)/(f), 15, 22; Chapter V cross-border transfers. ## Disclaimer This appendix is a reference for engineers, not a substitute for legal advice. Authority changes; verify before citing. The full citations and links live in research/05_fre707_and_ai_evidence_law.md.