His captain, Guy Means, privately called him “fruity” and told a friend that the officer was “way too out there with his gayness and he needed to tone it down” to get a promotion, the jury heard, according to the report
Then the captain said he didn’t know the friend and they never met. The the defense showed a pic of them hugging. Doh!
That's not hearsay. Hearsay has to be an out of court statement offered for the truth of the matter asserted. In this case, hearsay would be if you were using that out of court statement to prove the "fact" that the officer was "too fruity". That's not why it was being offered, though. So it wasn't hearsay.
In this case, that out of court statement (presumably testified to by someone in court), was being offered to show bias, not truth of some underlying fact. That's always admissible.
Also, if the captain was also a defendant, it is possible that even actual hearsay could have been admitted as an admission of a party opponent, which Is an exception to the usual rule of excluding hearsay.
So here's an example. Let's say you're suing someone for fraud, and someone testifies "I heard him say that he was deliberately lying about revenues to attract investors." That is hearsay, because it is an out of court statement that you're putting that into evidence to prove the fact that he lied about revenues. However, because he is a party to the case, and it is a statement against his own interest, it comes in as a hearsay exception.
This cop case isn't close, though. Very clearly not hearsay at all.