‘Rust’ Shooting Trial: Why Actor Alec Baldwin’s Involuntary Manslaughter Case Was Dismissed

CNN
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Two days after Alec Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter trial began and nearly three years after the fatal shooting on the set of the film “Rust” that led to his indictment, a New Mexico judge spoke eight words that visibly moved the actor — and marked the end of the trial.

“Your motion to dismiss the case with prejudice is granted,” Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer told Baldwin and his team of attorneys in court Friday afternoon, prompting an already shaking Baldwin to remove his glasses and sob into his hand before hugging his wife, Hilaria.

The ruling ended nearly three years of legal wrangling and prosecutorial shuffling ahead of the trial of Baldwin, who faced up to 18 months in prison and a $5,000 fine in connection with the fatal shooting of camerawoman Halyna Hutchins in October 2021 on the set of the western film “Rust.”

At the time of the Oct. 21, 2021, shooting, Baldwin was practicing a “cross draw” — pulling a gun from a holster on the side of his body opposite his draw hand — with a prop gun in a church on the film’s set in New Mexico when it fired a live round, killing Hutchins and wounding “Rust” director Joel Souza.

On Thursday, Baldwin’s defense team filed a motion to dismiss the case, alleging prosecutors concealed evidence “possibly pointing to an outside source of the live ammunition (prop supplier Seth Kenney) because the evidence would be favorable to Baldwin,” court documents show.

On Friday, after a chaotic hearing that featured a special prosecutor testifying and another special prosecutor — Erlinda Johnson — resigning from the prosecution that day, Marlowe Sommer sided with the defense over the evidentiary issue that first came to light Thursday, and granted a motion to dismiss the case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be retried.

Special prosecutor Kari Morrissey, answering questions under oath from defense attorney Alex Spiro on Friday, said she was disappointed by the dismissal.

“I believe the weight of the evidence was misinterpreted by the defense attorneys, but I have to respect the court’s decision,” Morrissey said Friday after the trial.

This was the reason for the dismissal of the Baldwin case.

Marlowe Sommer, who had insisted that the trial proceed on schedule, was clearly upset Friday morning when she halted testimony in the case and disbanded the jury so she could hear Baldwin’s motion to dismiss his criminal charges.

Ahead of her ruling on Friday, the judge called a dismissal with prejudice a “very extreme sanction” that would require her to review every element of the motion and “write a very good account of why I see what I see,” she said.

Baldwin’s team argued that investigators failed to properly inform the defense that a man had delivered a box of ammunition, allegedly related to the case, to investigators.

In its motion, the defense alleged that the state had “unilaterally” withheld evidence that could have been beneficial to Baldwin’s trial, a violation of the Brady Rule, named after the 1963 Brady v. Maryland case. The rule requires prosecutors to “disclose to the defense material, exculpatory information in the government’s possession,” according to Cornell Law School.

To establish a Brady violation, Marlowe Sommer explained Friday, the defendant must show that “the prosecution suppressed evidence, that the evidence was favorable to the defendant, and that the evidence was material to the defense.”

On Thursday, forensic technician Marissa Poppell testified in court that retired police officer Troy Teske delivered a box of ammunition to the Santa Fe County sheriff’s office in March after Gutierrez-Reed was convicted, CNN previously reported.

Teske, a friend of the gunsmith’s father, told investigators he believed the ammunition could be related to the “Rust” incident, Poppell said.

However, the items were cataloged separately from Baldwin’s case, excluded from the inventory of the “Rust” case, and not tested to see if they matched the fatal bullet, Poppell’s testimony said.

Marlowe Sommer said Friday that the Brady element of suppression of evidence had been met. “The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office and the prosecution failed to provide the defense with the supplemental report and to afford the defense the opportunity to inspect the collected rounds as evidence that Mr. Teske provided,” the judge said.

The second element Brady Marlowe Sommer raised was whether the evidence withheld by prosecutors was favorable to Baldwin, “either as impeachment evidence or as exonerating evidence,” she said.

“This point is satisfied. The suppressed evidence is favorable to the defendant,” the judge said. “It is impeachment evidence, was offered as impeachment evidence even in this trial, and is potentially exculpatory to the defense.”

Marlowe Sommer added that the exculpatory value of the evidence could not be analyzed at such a late date because of the non-disclosure. She then examined whether the withheld evidence was material to the case, which she concluded.

“The late discovery of this evidence at trial so impeded the effective use of evidence that it affected the fundamental fairness of the proceedings,” Marlowe Sommer said, adding that Baldwin’s defense was unable to test the prosecution’s theory regarding the source of the live bullets that killed Hutchins.

The judge said the state failed to provide the information to Baldwin’s defense team, and referred to the prosecutor’s withholding of the information as “willful and purposeful.”

Marlowe Sommer said, “If this behavior does not rise to the level of bad faith, it certainly comes so close to bad faith as to show signs of scorching.”

The judge also agreed that the late evidence was “very damaging” to Baldwin’s case.

“The jury has been sworn, there has been jeopardy, and this revelation at trial is so late that it undermines the defendant’s preparation for trial,” Marlowe Sommer said. “There is no way for the court to right this wrong.”

The judge added just before granting the motion to dismiss the case: “The State’s violation of discovery has caused an unnecessary, incurable delay in the jury trial. Dismissal with prejudice is warranted to ensure the integrity of the justice system and the efficient administration of justice.”

Gutierrez-Reed’s attorney, Jason Bowles, said he will file a motion to dismiss her case after Baldwin’s case is dismissed.

“The judge found that there was willful misconduct and we faced the same failures by the state in Hannah’s case,” Bowles said.

CNN’s Julia Vargas Jones contributed to this report.