Cavender v. State

In Cavender v. State, 547 S.W.2d 601 (Tex. Crim. App. 1977), a murder case, the State's case was heavily dependent upon circumstantial evidence. The court in Cavender found the harm to the defendant to be incurable where the prosecutor's questions to the defendant about his allegedly telling his mother that he "stabbed and raped" his aunt, followed by the assertion "your mother has told your uncle Paul that; isn't that the reason he is so angry," were improper since they were bottomed on hearsay several times removed, and the harmfulness of the questions, clearly calculated to inflame the minds of the jury, was compounded by the prosecutor's statement, in response to an objection by defense counsel, "I have all the real evidence in the file that Counsel needs, if he wants it." Cavender, 547 S.W.2d at 603.