Mom said she was drunk when baby died

DAYTON, Ohio, July 20 (UPI) -- An Ohio jury can hear a woman's statement that she was too drunk to know how her baby died when she allegedly put the child in the microwave, a judge ruled.

Dayton Police Detective Mike Galbraith testified at a hearing Thursday, acknowledging that the defendant -- China Arnold -- never admitted killing her 3 ½-week-old daughter, Paris Talley. But he said she all but admitted the crime when she said she was the only adult in the house that night.

"If I just hadn't gotten so drunk, I guess my baby wouldn't have died," Galbraith said Arnold told him.

Arnold's lawyer, Jon Paul Rion, argued that police did not have probable cause to arrest her in November 2006, three months after the baby's death.

The baby's DNA was found in the oven. Galbraith conceded the evidence did not show how the infant wound up in the microwave.