A 27-year-old woman was several minutes into her conversation with a veteran police officer outside his Manhattan station house when the officer made the crucial statement.

“Yes I did,” said the officer, Kenneth Moreno, after the woman pressed him on whether he had used a condom during sexual intercourse she claimed he had with her a few nights earlier.

What those words amount to  an admission of guilt or an effort to get the woman to leave him alone  is a point of contention that could prove critical in the rape trial of Officer Moreno and his partner, Officer Franklin L. Mata.

Justice Gregory Carro of State Supreme Court in Manhattan ruled Monday that those words, from a secretly recorded conversation between Officer Moreno and the woman, could be played for the jury during the trial, scheduled to start next week.