## Facts

- Michael Lee Schaffer was arrested in a stolen van containing roughly 1,700 grams of bagged and loose peyote buttons.
- At trial for possession of peyote, Schaffer testified that he knew the peyote was in the van but claimed he was acting as a police informant.
- Schaffer stated he had worked for about two years with an Abilene police officer, Jimmy Seals, providing information leading to drug arrests and convictions.
- Seals did not testify, and neither party subpoenaed him.
- After Schaffer raised the informant defense, the prosecutor had narcotics investigator Manuel A. Segovia contact Seals outside the jury’s presence.
- In rebuttal before the jury, Segovia testified that he spoke with Seals that morning and, based on that conversation, he would not ask the State to drop charges against Schaffer.
- The jury convicted Schaffer; the trial court assessed ten years’ confinement.
- The court of appeals reversed due to admission of hearsay, and the court of criminal appeals reviewed on the State’s petition.

## Issues

1. Whether the trial court erred by admitting rebuttal testimony implying the substance of an out-of-court statement by a non-testifying officer through another officer’s “bottom-line” conclusion.
2. Whether any such hearsay error was harmful where it attacked the defendant’s only meaningful defensive theory.

## Decision

- The court held Segovia’s testimony was inadmissible hearsay because it effectively conveyed Seals’s out-of-court repudiation of Schaffer’s informant claim.
- The court rejected the State’s argument that the testimony avoided hearsay merely because Segovia was instructed not to repeat Seals’s words.
- The court affirmed the intermediate court’s judgment reversing the conviction, concluding the error was reversible.

## Legal Principles

- Hearsay includes indirect testimony that is offered to prove the truth of an out-of-court assertion, even if the declarant’s words are not quoted.
- Courts examine substance over form: the key question is whether the testimony invites the jury to infer and accept the truth of an absent declarant’s statement.
- “Course-of-investigation” references may be permissible when used only to explain police conduct, but they are improper when used as a vehicle to prove the truth of the information received.
- Admission of hearsay is harmful when it bears directly on the defendant’s only defense and derives persuasive force from the apparent authority or credibility of the non-testifying declarant.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed reversal of Schaffer’s conviction because the State used an officer’s rebuttal “bottom-line” testimony to communicate an absent officer’s implied denial of the informant defense, constituting hearsay admitted for its truth and causing reversible harm.


Schaffer v. State, 777 S.W.2d 111 (Tex. Crim. App. 1989) (en banc)