In a stunning turn of events at Alec Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter trial, a New Mexico judge dismissed the single felony count filed against the actor on Friday and said prosecutors could not bring it again. The shocking decision followed after Baldwin’s defense lawyers filed an emergency motion alleging prosecutors and investigators withheld evidence.
“There is no way for the court to right this wrong,” New Mexico Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer ruled as Baldwin broke down in tears in the Santa Fe courtroom. “Your motion to dismiss with prejudice is granted.”
Baldwin, 66, hugged his lawyers Alex Spiro and Luke Nikas and then turned around to hug his weeping wife Hilaria. The scene capped a long legal nightmare for the actor in which he had been fighting allegations he recklessly pointed a replica revolver at cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and pulled the trigger on the set of the western movie Rust on October 21, 2021. He has long maintained he did not pull the trigger.
Jurors were sent home from the trial early Friday as the court held an evidentiary hearing over how a batch of .45 caliber ammunition possibly linked to armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed had been booked by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office last March but not supplied to Baldwin’s defense either physically or through the supplemental evidence report that it generated.
In her ruling, Judge Marlowe Sommer said the live ammunition, surrendered by a friend of Gutierrez-Reed’s father Thell Reed, could have helped Baldwin undermine prosecutors’ theory of the case and shore up his defense claim that the actions of others, not his own, led to the fatal shooting of Hutchins.
Shock and tears.
This was Alec Baldwin’s reaction after the judge announced she is dismissing the case against the actor in the involuntary manslaughter trial over the death of "Rust" cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
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— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) July 12, 2024
In delivering her admittedly “extreme” decision, Judge Marlowe Sommer said prosecutors “unilaterally withheld” evidence that was both “favorable” and “material” to Baldwin’s defense, the two thresholds necessary for her ruling. “The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office and the prosecution failed to disclose the supplemental [evidence] report to defense and provide defense an opportunity to inspect the rounds collected into evidence,” she said. “The suppressed evidence is favorable to the accused. It is impeachment evidence (and) is potentially exculpatory to the defense.” She said her ruling did not require a finding of “bad faith” on the part of the law enforcement officials who collected the evidence from a man named Troy Teske on March 6, 2024, the same day Gutierrez-Reed was convicted at her separate involuntary manslaughter trial.
“This evidence is material. The late discovery of this evidence during trial has impeded the effective use of evidence in such a way that it has impacted the fundamental fairness of the proceedings. The defense is not in a position to test the state’s theory as to the source of the live rounds that killed Ms. Hutchins,” Judge Marlowe Sommer said.
The lead special prosecutor on the case, Kari Morrissey, fought the motion from prosecutors to the point that she called herself as a witness during the evidentiary hearing Friday. She admitted under oath that her co-prosecutor, Erlinda Johnson, had resigned from the trial earlier in the day amid a disagreement over how to handle the public hearing. Morrissey said she never considered the ammunition material to Baldwin’s case because it was never on the Rust movie set and had never even entered the state of New Mexico to her knowledge. She said Teske claimed he received the live ammunition from Thell Reed and believed it might match the live ammunition eventually found on the Rust set.
Morrissey testified that even before Teske surrendered the bullets last March, she knew about the ammunition and asked him to send a photo. “When I saw this photograph, I could see that it was not at all similar to the live rounds on the set of Rust, and I decided not to take any steps to collect this ammunition.” She said Friday that all six live rounds eventually found on the Rust set were identical, and that they differed from the rounds in the image sent by Teske in terms of color and cone shape.
Morrissey testified that even before Teske surrendered the bullets last March, she knew about the ammunition and asked him to send a photo. “When I saw this photograph, I could see that it was not at all similar to the live rounds on the set of Rust, and I decided not to take any steps to collect this ammunition.” She said Friday that all six live rounds eventually found on the Rust set were identical, and that they differed from the rounds in the image sent by Teske in terms of color and cone shape.
One legal expert who followed the hearing on Friday said she expects Gutierrez-Reed’s legal team will also file a motion for her release from prison while she continues to fight her conviction. “A lot of the same aspects of the judge’s decision today apply to her case as well,” Jennifer Burrill, president of the New Mexico Criminal Defense Lawyers Association tells Rolling Stone.
