The evidence revealed Friday about the death of Eric Miller may have helped ensure a bail high enough to keep Ann Miller Kontz in jail. But will a jury ever hear that evidence?

Area lawyers have their doubts.

Kontz, 34, faces life in prison if convicted of the December 2000 arsenic murder of Miller, her first husband.

Wake Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens set Kontz's bail at $3 million Friday after District Attorney Colon Willoughby divulged the contents of a private conversation between Kontz's alleged lover and his lawyer.

That conversation is summarized in a statement by Richard Gammon, an attorney for Derril Willard, who police say was having an affair with Kontz. The statement says that Willard recalled Kontz telling him that she injected Miller's intravenous line with a poison.

Willoughby said he presented the new evidence Friday because the circumstances of the offense and the strength of the case are among the significant issues in setting bail.

"We thought the judge should see a small section of the evidence," Willoughby said.

He expects to present Gammon's account to jurors during the trial, he said.

But Kontz's attorney, Joseph B. Cheshire V, said the statement is hearsay evidence and violates a clause in the Constitution that gives the accused the right to confront the accuser. "The weakness in a case like this to me is quite stunning," he said.

Other area lawyers said the case was on the cutting edge of law.

Raleigh defense attorney Karl Knudsen, who is not connected to the case, noted that the U.S. Supreme Court recently tightened the rules regarding hearsay evidence. The justices gave greater weight to a defendant's right to cross-examine and confront witnesses, Knudsen said.

There are several exceptions in which hearsay can be used as evidence in trial, such as when a person makes a statement while dying, or while under stress of excitement caused by the event in question.

Most hearsay evidence deals with secondhand information, but Carl Fox, district attorney in Orange and Chatham counties, referred to Willard's statement as "totem pole hearsay" -- based on what Kontz said to Willard, who repeated it to his lawyer, who wrote it down for a judge.

The bar for allowing such information is high, and lawyers are allowed to present information to show why the hearsay information is credible.

One example could be that "this guy told it to his lawyer, and he has reason not to divulge it to other people. It would tend to implicate him," Fox said.

Those issues probably will be resolved in a hearing, when the state says it will try to use Willard's statement and the defense files a motion to suppress it, Fox said.

If Willard's statement is not admissible at trial, releasing it now could backfire for the prosecution, said Arnold Loewy, Graham Kenan professor at the UNC-Chapel Hill law school.

"It might make it more difficult to find an unbiased jury that has not heard that information," Loewy said.

When Forsyth County District Attorney Tom Keith heard about the Kontz case and the prosecutors' evidence, he said the case would be a tough one.

Most prosecutors still do not know all the ramifications of the latest Supreme Court opinion on hearsay, Keith said. "You're into some very complex new law," he said.

But Willoughby has a reputation as a very careful lawyer, and if he says Willard's statement will stand in court, Keith said he would believe him.

"I guarantee he's got a 10-page brief on this already," Keith said. "Knowing Colon, if he thinks it's admissible -- it's admissible."

Cheshire said that his client's family probably cannot afford the high bail but that the new information revealed the weakness of the prosecution's case.

"They had all the information that they had for years, and they knew it was not enough," Cheshire said. "They rested their entire case on what Mr. Gammon says Mr. Willard told him."

Willoughby responded that the statement "is just one piece of evidence. It's a piece of evidence that ordinarily prosecutors don't have in a poisoning case. We do have other evidence that we think is of considerable value."