"Those statements served as probable cause," Detective Michael Burdick of the Mid-Island's 122nd Precinct Detectives Squad testified during a hearing in state Supreme Court, St. George, to determine whether statements Mrs. Redmond-Mercereau gave to police after she had been drinking should be admissible at trial.

Mrs. Redmond-Mercereau, 38, is charged with second-degree murder and evidence-tampering in the slaying of FDNY Supervising Fire Marshal Douglas Mercereau. He was shot once in the head with his service revolver on Dec. 2, 2007, in the couple's Tarring Street home in Oakwood.

Burdick said a sergeant ordered him to arrest the woman and issue her Miranda rights shortly after noon, nearly three hours after Mrs. Redmond-Mercereau left neighbor Karen Krack's home and voluntarily went with Burdick and Detective Alice Rodenberg to the New Dorp stationhouse for further questioning.

"There was a lot of people in the house," Ms. Rodenberg said yesterday. The police stationhouse, she added, offered a "private" setting.

The interview did not set well with Mrs. Redmond-Mercereau, Burdick recalled.

"She said, 'I'm being accused of a brutal homicide. I want to go check on my children,'" Burdick said. "She was angry."

At the bottom of the Miranda sheet, she signed her name and wrote, "My rights were read to me at 12:13 p.m. after much questioning and being accused of the brutal homicide of my husband," Burdick said.

Then she called her lawyer.

Attorney Mario Gallucci said he phoned the precinct at 12:53 p.m., notified investigators that he was Mrs. Redmond-Mercereau's attorney, and instructed police not to speak with her.

But detectives continued to question her anyway during the afternoon. And one retrieved a DNA sample from a cup Mrs. Redmond-Mercereau tossed in a trash can, a former supervising detective admitted during the pretrial hearing in October.

Allowed to leave the precinct and go home that night, she surrendered voluntarily three days later after a grand jury handed up an indictment.

"The police have rushed to judgment in this case," said Gallucci, who is representing the defendant with attorney Joseph Benfanti. "Nobody took into consideration that there could be no other suspects in this case."

Justice Robert J. Collini said he would render a decision March 20 whether or not to suppress statements Mrs. Redmond-Mercereau made after she had been drinking and before she was read her rights.

A tentative trial date was set for March 30.