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BROOKLYN (CBS) ― At the Brooklyn Supreme Court on Tuesday a hearing was held on whether Judge Priscilla Hall will allow a videotaped statement, practically a confession, made by Nixzaliz Santiago into evidence. Santiago is the mother of Nixzmary Brown, the little girl the Brooklyn District Attorney said was practically tortured to death last January by her stepfather, Cesar Rodriguez, while her mother, Nixzaliz, failed to protect her.

When it was learned that the city's child welfare agency, the Administration for Children's Services, failed in its mission to protect the girl, it started a shakeup that is being felt today.

If the judge allowed the tape into evidence, the D.A. planned to release it to the media.

The first part of the hearing became an argument among the lawyers over releasing the tape to the media.

But in the middle of all that, a bombshell: I could hear a buzz growing louder at the defense table between Santiago and her translator; and sure enough, Santiago ordered her translator to shout out on her behalf, "I want to address the court!"

As if that alone wasn't enough to snap heads back, the reason turned out to be she wanted to fire her lawyer, Robert Abrams.

Rather than discuss this in chambers, away from the public, as is usually done, Abrams read from a letter by Ms. Santiago, which claimed that he yelled at her; that if she wanted to see her children again she had to go to trial, and not take a plea deal; that he was in it for the money and fame; and that his comments in the press made her the target of beatings at Rikers.

In the letter, she said she "sort of" liked the female co-counsel Abrams had brought into the case, Lynn Troy Henderson; but, questioned by the judge, and put on the spot in open court, Santiago said she "did not know" if she wanted to go ahead and fire Abrams, or both of them. Or, keep them.

Abrams incredibly got up and tried to answer each charge point by point; but the body language between him and Henderson made the whole thing awkward. And you got the sense watching Jeffrey Schwartz, the lawyer for Cesar Rodriguez, that he didn't want to be there.

Finally, Judge Hall said she would postpone a decision, and ordered the original hearing to continue. Schwartz vigorously cross-examined the detective who took his client's statement, noting the detective deliberately let a half-hour pass before reading him his Miranda rights. It got heated between Schwartz and the D.A.

Next, Det. Valentin was called to the stand. Because the Dominican-born detective is fluent in Spanish, she was the one who took the statement from Nixzaliz Santiago. The courtroom grew truly quiet, as the detective translated what the woman had told her in Spanish of the little girl's final hours. Brutalized, according to the mother, by her husband (she actually ended her statement to Det. Valentin by saying Rodriguez always provided for the family, though).

According to the mother (on the video that will be played in court Wednesday) Cesar Rodriguez, who was used to beating the girl regularly for allegedly stealing food or hitting her siblings, pushed her head under the bathtub faucet after stripping her naked, beat her, and tied her to a stool. Then he listened to music in another room. Some time later, the mother got up the nerve to go to her daughter. Only, the moans she had been hearing had ended. The little girl's body was cold.

She called her husband, who performed what she thought was CPR. Nixzmary did not revive. Cesar told his wife, "This girl has left us."

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