BERNE — After several hours and numerous questions by the defense for the policeman that arrested Marcia Pangburn last July, Judge Alan Zuk said the purpose of the hearing on Tuesday afternoon hadn’t been addressed.

The Mapp, Huntley, and Dunaway hearing for which Zuk will give his decision next month was held to determine whether Albany County Sheriff’s officers acted illegally, whether Pangburn’s statements were made involuntarily, and whether evidence was obtained illegally, Zuk told Lewis Oliver, Pangburn’s attorney.

“We are millions of miles away from those definitions,” said Zuk, about three hours into the hearing on Dec. 16.

Oliver said he was trying to lay out the facts of the case in detail in court, expecting to argue in written briefs on the points Zuk described. If Oliver is successful, then the prosecution’s evidence could be suppressed ahead of trial.

The assistant district attorney prosecuting the case, Brittany Grome, questioned Javier Martinez, the only person who testified, for roughly 15 minutes before Oliver.

Martinez described what happened on July 13, when he and deputy Philip Milano of the Albany County Sheriff’s Office checked on a car they saw in a cemetery on Thompsons Lake Road, where Pangburn was mourning over the graves of her brother and father. They ultimately had Pangburn take field sobriety tests, suspecting her of driving while intoxicated, and charging her with resisting arrest and obstruction of governmental administration as she tried to leave the scene and walk home a few hundred yards away.

Martinez said he smelled alcohol on her breath and from her vehicle, she failed field sobriety tests, and she tested positive for the presence of alcohol on a screening device. Her breath sample given later, however, measured a blood-alcohol content of .01, well below the legal limit of .08.

Grome, too, was frustrated by Oliver’s drawn out questioning.

“She has to be told she was under arrest,” Oliver said to Zuk after Martinez conceded he never said that she was under arrest as he was putting handcuffs on her wrists.

“Judge, that’s not true, and we’ll provide case law at a later time,” Grome said flatly. Zuk sustained nearly all of her objections over the relevance and redundancy of Oliver’s questions.

As Zuk pressed Oliver to focus on the scope of the hearing, Oliver questioned Martinez about the final moments of the arrest, asking whether Pangburn was arrested because she at first refused to breathe into an alcohol-screening device.

“I had the right to arrest her based on my observation of her and based on the totality of the circumstances,” said Martinez.

Outside of court, Pangburn said she felt the hearing did not go well for her, noting her sister, who watched, said Oliver was unprepared. She initially refused an offer from the district attorney’s office to adjourn the case in contemplation of dismissal and told The Enterprise she had to borrow money to pay for an attorney.

Pangburn said Martinez was wrong about “erratic” tire tracks that he testified to seeing across the grass of the cemetery that night, leading him to suspect gravestones might have been damaged. She said she drove in the cemetery’s tracks for cars.

When asked by Oliver why he is currently working for the Bethlehem Police Department, after working for the sheriff’s office for little more than a year, Martinez gave no indication it was related to Pangburn’s case.

“Bethlehem offers a lot of opportunity, as well as, quite frankly, a little more money,” said Martinez.

The hearing lasted more than three hours. The two attorneys requested transcripts from a court stenographer, whose time-based wage is a large expense for the small court.

“Would you accept briefing, judge?” Oliver asked as the hearing concluded.

“Sure,” Zuk responded.