OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
3:43 PM – Friday, July 12, 2024
Alec Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter trial was shockingly dismissed by the judge on Friday.
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The defense team contended that the prosecution had concealed ammunition-related evidence that could have been connected to the 2021 shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the Western film Rust.
“The sanction of dismissal is the only warranted remedy” in this case, First Judicial District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer stated.
66-year-old Baldwin wept and covered his face with his hands when Sommer revealed her decision.
If the jury had all found Baldwin guilty of the crime, he could have received a prison term as long as 18 months. On October 21st, 2021, while rehearsing a scene at the Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe County, the actor’s “prop” revolver went off, killing Hutchins, 42, and injuring director Joel Souza.
The actor had entered a not guilty plea. He claims that he followed instructions to aim the firearm toward Hutchins, but allegedly did not realize that it was holding live ammunition.
The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office seized live rounds of ammunition as evidence, according to Baldwin’s attorneys, but neither disclosed their presence to the actor’s defense team nor entered them into the official case file.
In her testimony this week, Marissa Poppell, a crime scene technician for the sheriff’s office, asserted that the rounds had not been concealed from Baldwin’s attorneys. She also refuted Baldwin attorney Alex Spiro’s claim that the round that killed Hutchins at the Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe County on October 21st, 2021, was Colt .45 ammunition.
“The Colt .45 rounds were delivered to the sheriff’s office in March by former police officer Troy Teske, a friend of Thell Reed, the stepfather of Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the same day she was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in Hutchins’ death. The prosecution described Teske as a ‘good Samaritan,’” according to NBC News.
Although Baldwin’s case was dismissed, Gutierrez-Reed was given an 18-month prison sentence. However, some legal experts who reached out to the press mentioned the possibility that this dismissal could mean that her conviction is ultimately overturned.
The case’s special prosecutor, Kari Morrissey, stated that neither the ammunition under question nor its connection to the case were concealed from Baldwin’s attorneys. She called the argument a “wild goose chase that has no evidentiary value whatsoever” and contended that the bullets were not the same size or composition as the live rounds recovered from the Rust set, including the one that killed Hutchins, 42.
At a pretrial hearing on Monday, First Judicial District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer had already asserted that the actor’s involvement as a co-producer on Rust was not relevant to the trial, giving the actor and his team a significant legal victory already. This action stopped the prosecution from claiming that he had a specific duty on the set.
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