Actor Alec Baldwin sobbed and embraced his defense lawyers after the judge in his “Rust” involuntary manslaughter trial dismissed the case on Friday evening, finding that prosecutors had suppressed evidence.
“The state’s willful withholding of this information was intentional and deliberate,” 1st Judicial District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer said. “If this conduct does not rise to the level of bad faith, it certainly comes so near to bad faith as to show signs of scorching prejudice.”
If convicted, Baldwin could have faced up to 18 months in prison for involuntary manslaughter after a revolver he was rehearsing with on the “Rust” movie set fired a live round and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in 2021. Baldwin has said that he didn’t pull the trigger, telling ABC News that “I would never point a gun at anyone and pull the trigger at them. Never.” The armorer on the set, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and in April was sentenced to 18 months; her lawyer told NBC News later on Friday that they intend to file a motion next week to have her case dismissed.
In Baldwin’s case, the evidence in question was ammunition that a witness had turned over to the state earlier this year. Investigators did not enter the ammunition into the case file, nor did prosecutors reveal it to the defense; its existence came to light on Thursday when Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office crime scene technician Marissa Poppell was being cross-examined on the stand.
Baldwin’s lawyers then filed a motion to dismiss the case, accusing the state of hiding the evidence to prevent them from determining for themselves the ammunition’s relevance to the case.
In an extraordinary turn of events just three days into the trial, special prosecutor Kari T. Morrissey took the stand on Friday, telling the judge that she had only seen a photo of the undisclosed ammunition and didn’t think it matched the rounds on the film set. Yet when the judge inspected the evidence herself — donning latex gloves to examine the rounds and asking a technician to identify each one — at least one of the bullets was found to be similar. Morrissey disputed that the state had hidden the evidence from the defense, saying she did not believe the ammunition had “evidentiary value” in the case. She also revealed that another special prosecutor appointed in the case had resigned earlier that day. In her decision to toss the case, Sommer excoriated the prosecutors. “There is no way for the court to right this wrong,” she added. The case was dismissed with prejudice, which means the state cannot bring charges against Baldwin again in Hutchins’ death.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
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