Did mom's meth-tainted milk kill baby?

A judge declared a mistrial Thursday in the case of a woman accused of killing her baby by nursing with methamphetamine-contaminated breast milk, a district attorney's spokeswoman said. The jury deadlocked 6-6 in the case against the baby's mother, Amy Leanne Prien, said Ingrid Wyatt, spokeswoman for the Riverside County district attorney's office. "It's certainly a disappointment. The goal is always to try and get a verdict in any case," she said. "It was a very difficult case with complicated issues involved." Prien could have faced 15 years to life in prison if she had been convicted. The district attorney's office has until July 11 to decide whether to try the case again. Prien was arrested in January 2002 and charged with murder in the death of 3-month-old Jacob Wesley Smith. She was convicted of second-degree murder in 2003, but an appeals court overturned the conviction, citing flawed jury instructions from the trial judge. Her retrial started 21/2 months ago and jurors began deliberating on June 15. Prien said she woke up and found her son dead on January 19, 2002. Prosecutors argued that Prien, who had smoked meth for several years, had breast-fed the child after smoking even though she knew it could damage him. Blood tests after her arrest showed the methamphetamine level in her blood within a potentially lethal range. Her attorney, Joe Reichmann, however, argued that the charges were based on "make believe science" because authorities never tested her breast milk.