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The case against a Tucson man and woman accused of burying the woman's newborn son in their back yard was sent back to a grand jury Monday after a judge ruled prosecutors violated their rights the first time around.

Regina Lockwood and Nicholi Grimm, both 22, were indicted last year on one count each of abandonment or concealment of a dead human body, a Class 5 felony; and one count of conspiracy to commit a Class 5 felony.

Their attorneys argued Monday that prosecutors should have given the grand jurors the option of indicting the couple on less-serious charges. They also argued that prosecutors gave "misleading, irrelevant and prejudicial" information to the grand jurors.

The attorneys, Natasha Wrae and Tom Norton, also said that because prosecutors didn't share with the defense a handout they had given the grand jury, their clients' rights were violated.

Wrae said there is nothing in the record that indicates what was on the handout. Prosecutor Bunkye Chi said it was an instruction on a potential charge.

In Pima County Superior Court, Judge Charles Sabalos said a record should have been made about the handout.

Chi said she expects to present the case again in a few weeks.

According to police, Lockwood gave birth to the boy in mid-September with the help of Grimm, a friend who is not the baby's father.

Police say the baby was then submerged in a water-filled bucket and buried inside another bucket in the back yard of their home, in the 3100 block of East Glenn Street.

Lockwood and Grimm say the baby was stillborn, and they didn't have money for a proper burial.

The Pima County medical examiner told authorities the baby was delivered at about eight months during the pregnancy. He weighed around 4 pounds but could have lost weight due to decomposition. The umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby's neck, but the doctor couldn't tell if it had been placed around his neck or if it had wrapped around his neck before birth.

The doctor couldn't tell if the baby was stillborn.

According to police records, Lockwood told police she had miscarried once or twice before and lost another baby when she was 7 1/2 months pregnant.

Doctors told her she would never be able to carry a baby to full term without endangering her life, so when she discovered she was pregnant in June or July of 2005, Lockwood said, she took several herbs and castor oil to cause a miscarriage.

Lockwood said she didn't have insurance, hates doctors and "hospitals kill people," so she felt she had no choice.

Lockwood told detectives that she began having pain on Sept. 11 and that the fetus hadn't moved for at least a month.

She said that when she felt she was finally going to expel the fetus, she had taken to calling it "corpsie."

Lockwood told police that she miscarried in the toilet the next day and flushed the remains. She said she couldn't have been more than a few months pregnant.

When told they'd heard she and Grimm had buried the fetus in the back yard, Lockwood accused the detectives of playing a "sick joke" on her.

She said she miscarried a fetus that already had been dead a month or two.

"It wears you. It brings you down and it makes you depressed knowing you have a corpse just chilling inside of you, just sitting there," Lockwood said.

Eventually, Lockwood acknowledged that Grimm buried the fetus in the back yard after discovering it wouldn't flush. Burying it in the bucket was better than "just digging a shallow grave and throwing it in," she said.

Although she said the fetus was dead, she acknowledged that she never touched it.

"It was dead. I know it was dead," Lockwood said. "It didn't have energy emanating from it, and I can't explain that to you guys."

Lockwood grew upset when detectives questioned her about not giving the "baby" a chance.

"It could not have given me a chance," Lockwood said. "It could have potentially killed me."