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Alec Baldwin was crying in court after the case against him was dismissed.
Video shows actor Alec Baldwin crying and growing emotional as a judge on June 12 threw out the criminal charge against him in the death of Halyna Hutchins, who was shot on the set of the movie “Rust.”
The judge, Mary Marlowe Sommer, threw out the charge after finding that prosecutors withheld key evidence from the defense, the video shows. “There is no way for the court to right this wrong,” the judge says in the video.
The indictment, filed in January 2024, accused Baldwin of involuntary manslaughter (negligent use of a firearm) and involuntary manslaughter (without due caution or circumspection) in the death of Hutchins in Santa Fe County, State of New Mexico, during filming at Bonanza Creek Ranch.
The Judge Said That Dismissal Is ‘The Only Warranted Remedy,’ the Video Shows
GettyUS actor Alec Baldwin and his wife Hilaria Baldwin embrace during his trial on involuntary manslaughter at Santa Fe County District Court in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on July 12, 2024. Baldwin’s trial for involuntary manslaughter was dismissed by a judge Friday after she ruled that key evidence over a fatal shooting on the set of “Rust” had been withheld from the defense.
The video shows Sommer discussing how the trial court possessed “broad discretionary authority” to determine which sanction to apply to the case.
“The sanction of dismissal is the only warranted remedy,” she decided.
“The jury has been sworn. Jeopardy has attached. And a mistrial would not be based on manifest necessity,” Sommer said in court.
“The sanction of dismissal is warranted in this case. The state has repeatedly made representations to the defense and to the court that they were compliant with all of their discovery obligations,” said the judge.
“Despite their repeated representations, they have continued to fail to disclose critical evidence to the defendant,” she added.
The judge dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning it can’t be refiled, CNN reported.
Sommer said dismissal was necessary to ensure the “integrity of the judicial system and the efficient administration of justice.”
“I believe that the importance of the evidence was misconstrued by the defense attorneys,” special prosecutor Kari Morrissey told reporters after the dismissal, CNN reported. “But I have to respect the court’s decision.”
According to CNN, members of Baldwin’s family, including his wife Hilaria, who was in the courtroom, also cried when the judge announced her decision.
CNN reported that the evidence involved “ammunition brought forward by a man after the trial of the film’s armorer,” adding that Morrissey said she believed it had “no evidentiary value.”
According to CNN, the accusations stemmed from the testimony of a crime scene technician who said that a retired police officer who was a “friend of the armorer’s father” had brought ammunition to authorities after the armorer’s trial, which led to a conviction. But the ammunition was “cataloged separately” and “not included in the Rust inventory or tested to see if they matched the lethal round,” CNN reported.
“I didn’t know that the ammunition that became the subject of today’s hearing existed,” Morrissey said, according to CNN. “There is no reason to believe that the evidence that we discussed in court today was related to the set of ‘Rust.’ It never left the state of Arizona. I understand that the court disagrees with me and I respect the court’s decision.”
The Woman Who Died, Halyna Hutchins, Was Killed by a ‘Prop Firearm’ Discharged by Alec Baldwin, the Sheriff’s Office Says
GettyAlec Baldwin.
In a news release at the time, the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s office said that deputies were dispatched to the movie set of the western “Rust” on October 21, 2021, after receiving a 911 call about a shooting on set.
Two people were shot, the Sheriff’s Office confirmed – Halyna Hutchins, 42, the “director of photography,” and Joel Souza, 48, the director.
They were shot when a “prop firearm was discharged by Alec Baldwin . . . producer and actor,” the release said.
Hutchins was flown to the University of New Mexico Hospital by helicopter and was pronounced dead there, the release said, adding that Souza received treatment for his injuries. He survived the shooting.
Two days before she died, Hutchins posted a video of herself on Instagram riding horses and wrote, “One of the perks of shooting a western is you get to ride horses on your day off:)”
Jessica McBride is a news, sports, and entertainment reporter covering breaking news, politics sports, entertainment, and crime for Heavy. She is a former reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Waukesha Freeman newspapers in Wisconsin and is a senior journalism instructor at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. More about Jessica McBride
