A United States judge has dismissed the involuntary manslaughter case against Hollywood actor Alec Baldwin after finding that the state had withheld evidence on how live rounds ended up on a film set where a cinematographer was fatally shot.
The trial that started three days ago came to a dramatic end on Friday after Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer threw out the case based on the misconduct of police and prosecutors over the withholding of evidence from the defence in the 2021 shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the film Rust.
“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 in the court in Santa Fe, New Mexico state.
“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 judge said the case cannot be filed again. This ends the criminal culpability of Baldwin, 66, after a nearly three-year saga that began when a revolver he was pointing at Hutchins during rehearsal went off, killing her and wounding director Joel Souza.
Breaking down in tears, the multiple Emmy Award-winning actor hugged his wife Hilaria Baldwin as other family members wept in the public gallery.
Baldwin’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, told the court that the Santa Fe sheriff’s office took possession of the live rounds in March as evidence but failed to list them in the investigation file or disclose their existence to defence lawyers.
“The real reason you didn’t inventory that evidence is because it could have jeopardised the law enforcement case,” Spiro told Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office Corporal Alexandria Hancock, the lead investigator.
District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies said in a statement that their goal from the beginning was “to seek justice for Halyna Hutchins”.
“We are disappointed that the case did not get to the jury.”
Lead state prosecutor Kari Morrissey also said she did not “intend to mislead the court” after defending herself from the witness stand.
“My understanding of what was dropped off at the sheriff’s office is on this computer screen and it looks absolutely nothing like the live rounds from the set of Rust,” she said.
Hutchins died in Hollywood’s first on-set shooting in nearly 30 years when Baldwin was directed to point a revolver at her as she set up a camera shot during filming southwest of Santa Fe. The weapon fired a .45 calibre round inadvertently loaded by the film’s armourer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed.
Baldwin and other producers still face civil lawsuits from Hutchins’s parents and sister and other crew members.
Hutchins’s widower and young son agreed to settle their lawsuit about a year after the shooting, with the widower becoming an executive producer on the then-unfinished film.
Prosecutors got one conviction for Hutchins’s death, with Gutierrez-Reed sentenced to 18 months in prison for involuntary manslaughter.
However, Gutierrez-Reed and her lawyer, Jason Bowles, have said they will file a motion to dismiss the case on the basis of Baldwin’s verdict.
