‘Rust’ shooting trial: Why manslaughter case against actor Alec Baldwin was dismissed | CNN

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Two days into Alec Baldwin’s manslaughter trial and nearly three years after the fatal shooting on the set of the movie “Rust” led to his indictment, a New Mexico judge delivered eight words that left the actor visibly emotional — and marked the end of the trial.

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

The ruling caps nearly three years of back-and-forth legal arguments and rotating prosecutors leading up to the trial against Baldwin, who faced up to 18 months in prison and a $5,000 fine in connection with the October 2021 shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the Western film “Rust.”

At the time of the Oct. 21, 2021, shooting, Baldwin was practicing “cross-firing” — drawing a gun from a holster on the side of his body opposite his drawing hand — with a toy gun in a church on the film’s set in New Mexico when he 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, claiming prosecutors withheld evidence. “potentially pointing to an outside source of live ammunition (accessory supplier Seth Kenney) because the evidence would be favorable to Baldwin,” court documents show.

On Friday, following a chaotic hearing in which one special prosecutor testified and another special prosecutor — Erlinda Johnson — resigned from the prosecution team that day, Marlowe Sommer sided with the defense because of the evidentiary problem first highlighted Thursday, and granted the motion to dismiss with prejudice, meaning the case cannot be retried.

Special prosecutor Kari Morrissey, who answered questions under oath Friday from defense attorney Alex Spiro, said she was disappointed by the rejection.

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

Here’s what led to the dismissal of the Baldwin case.

Marlowe Sommer, who had insisted the trial go ahead as scheduled, was visibly disturbed early Friday when she interrupted testimony in the case and dismissed the jury so she could consider Baldwin’s motion to dismiss his criminal charge.

Before issuing her decision Friday, the judge called a dismissal with prejudice “a very extreme sanction” that would require her to examine every element of the motion and “build a very good case as to why I see what I see,” she said.

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

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

To establish a Brady Act violation, 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.”

In court Thursday, crime scene technician Marissa Poppell testified 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, who was a friend of the gunsmith’s father, told investigators he believed the ammunition might be associated with the “Rust” incident, according to Poppell.

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

Marlowe Sommer said Friday that the suppression of evidence element to prove a Brady element was satisfied. “The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office and the prosecution failed to disclose the supplemental report to the defense and failed to provide the defense with an opportunity to inspect the bullets collected in Mr. Teske’s evidence,” the judge said.

The second element of the Brady case that Marlowe Sommer analyzes is whether the evidence suppressed by prosecutors was favorable to Baldwin, “either as indictment evidence or as exculpatory evidence,” she said.

“That part is satisfied. The suppressed evidence is favorable to the accused,” the judge said. “This is impeachment evidence, which was even introduced in this trial as impeachment evidence, and is potentially exculpatory for the defense.”

Marlowe Sommer added that the exculpatory value of the evidence could not be analysed at such a late stage due to the non-disclosure. She then considered whether the suppressed evidence was material to the case, which she concluded.

“The late discovery of this evidence in the trial hampered the effective use of the evidence in a manner that impacted 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 ammunition that killed Hutchins.

The judge said the state failed to provide the information to Baldwin’s defense team, calling the prosecutor’s withholding of information “intentional and deliberate.”

Marlowe Sommer said: “If this conduct does not rise to the level of bad faith, it certainly comes close to showing signs of burning.”

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

“The jury is sworn in, accountability is engaged, and this disclosure at trial is so late that it compromises the defendant’s preparation for trial,” Marlowe Sommer said. “There is no way for the court to correct this error.”

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

Gutierrez-Reed’s attorney, Jason Bowles, said he would seek to have his case dismissed following Baldwin’s dismissal.

“The judge found willful misconduct and we had the same failures in Hannah’s case as well, on the part of the state,” Bowles said.

CNN’s Julia Vargas Jones contributed to this report.