§ 40.470 Rule 805. Hearsay within hearsay

Sometimes a statement contains another statement inside it. For example, a written report might quote what someone told the person writing it. This creates two layers of hearsay, since both the report and the quoted statement are out-of-court statements being used to prove something is true.

This rule says that layered hearsay can still be allowed as evidence, but only if every layer fits its own exception to the hearsay rule. In other words, you cannot just find one exception and use it to cover the whole chain of statements. Each individual statement inside the larger statement has to qualify on its own under one of the recognized hearsay exceptions.

This matters in real cases because documents and testimony often include multiple layers of statements. A police report might describe what a witness said, and that witness might be repeating what someone else told them. Before this kind of layered information can be used as evidence, a court has to check each layer separately to make sure it fits an exception. If even one layer does not qualify, that part of the evidence cannot come in.