Stewart v. State

In Stewart v. State, 718 S.W.2d 286 (Tex. Crim. App. 1986), a 5-4 decision, this Court upheld a drug delivery conviction based on a bare offer to sell a non-existent hundred dollar bag of heroin. There was a bag with a brown powdery substance in it, but at the time of the offer, the Legislature had not yet enacted statutes that cover "simulated controlled substances." In that case, this Court rejected the defendant's argument that the intervening enactment of such a statute demonstrated that the Legislature never intended that the Controlled Substances Act cover the delivery of bogus contraband. The Court stated: when delivery is by actual or constructive transfer the substance must be proved, usually by its chemical properties, to be a controlled substance. However, when delivery is by offer to sell no transfer need take place. A defendant need not even have any controlled substance. All he need do, as appellant did, is state that he had a hundred dollar bag of heroin he would sell to the officers. Id. at 288. Although, under Stewart, the State did not need to produce any physical evidence of contraband to convict the defendant for the "offer to sell" offense, that holding certainly does not imply that if the evidence shows that the defendant did produce evidence of contraband to consummate the sale, he could then be convicted of a second delivery offense for the same sale.