A New Mexico judge on Friday brought a sudden and stunning end to the involuntary manslaughter case against Alec Baldwin, dismissing it in the middle of the actor's trial and saying it cannot be filed again.
Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer dismissed the case based on the misconduct of police and prosecutors over the withholding of evidence from the defense in the 2021 shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the film “Rust.”
Baldwin cried, hugged his two attorneys, gestured to the front of the court, then turned to hug his crying wife Hilaria, the mother of seven of his eight children, holding the embrace for 12 seconds. He climbed into an SUV outside the Santa Fe courthouse without speaking to media.
“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,” Marlowe Sommer said. “If this conduct does not rise to the level of bad faith it certainly comes so near to bad faith to show signs of scorching.”
The decision ends the criminal culpability of the 66-year-old Baldwin after a nearly three-year saga that began when a revolver he was pointing at Hutchins during a rehearsal went off, killing her and wounding director Joel Souza.
The career of the “Hunt for Red October” and “30 Rock” star and frequent “Saturday Night Live” host — who has been a household name for more than three decades — had been put into doubt, and he could have gotten 18 months in prison if convicted.
He and other producers still face civil lawsuits from Hutchins' parents and sister.
Sommer put a pause on the trial earlier Friday while she considered the defense motion to dismiss the case over ammunition evidence they say prosecutors hid from them that may have been related to the shooting on the set of the Western “Rust” in 2021. The defense said they should have had the ability to determine its importance.
The prosecution said that the ammunition was not connected to the case and was not hidden.
The issue emerged Thursday on the second day of the actor's trial during defense questioning of sheriff's crime scene technician Marissa Poppell. Baldwin lawyer Alex Spiro asked whether a “good Samaritan” had come into the sheriff's office with the ammunition earlier this year at the end of the trial of Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the film's armorer, for her role in Hutchins' death. She was sentenced to 18 months in prison on an involuntary manslaughter conviction, which she is now appealing.
The evidence was not put into the same file as the rest of the “Rust” case, and was not presented to Baldwin's defense team when they examined the ballistics evidence in April.
The man who supplied ammunition was a close friend of Gutierrez-Reed's father, movie armorer Thell Reed. Special prosecutor Kari Morrissey argued that the move from the men was part of an attempt by Reed to shift blame away from his daughter.
“This is a wild goose chase that has no evidentiary value whatsoever,” Morrissey told the judge Friday. “This is just a man trying to protect his daughter.”
The case's other special prosecutor, Erlinda Ocampo Johnson, resigned from the case earlier Friday. Spiro asked whether she had resigned based on the evidence issues being discussed. Morrissey said she believed it was over the holding of the public hearing itself.
Speaking outside the courthouse doors, Morrissey said she respects the judge's decision but that there was no reason to believe the undisclosed evidence in question was related to the set of “Rust.”
“The importance of the evidence was misconstrued by the defense attorneys,” she said. “We did everything humanly possible to bring justice to Halyna and to her family and we're proud of the work we did."
