Alec Baldwin has had the case against him dismissed after the Judge determined that the prosecution had withheld ammunition evidence.
“There is no way for the court to right this wrong,” Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer said, as Mr. Baldwin broke down in tears.
The decision was a shocking end to the trial, which had seen the actor supported by his wife Hilaria Baldwin every day as he defended himself from the accusation of involuntary manslaughter. Hilaria was also seen sobbing with her hands covering her face.
In 2021, a gun he was rehearsing with while on the set of the movie Rust fired a live round, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. He insisted he had been told the gun was "cold," meaning it should have been impossible to fire.
The decision came after Judge Sommer put on blue latex gloves and cut open a manila envelope which contained previously unexamined evidence: live rounds of ammunition that the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office had taken possession of following Hannah Gutierrez-Reed's conviction, but did not record in the official case file.
They also did not reveal their existence to the actor’s defense team.
Alec’s attorney Alex Spiro claimed that the evidence suggested the live ammunition came from the prop supplier, rather than the film’s armorer.
“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," said the Judge in her statement as she revealed her decision, calling the prosecution's actions “intentional and deliberate".
“The jury has been sworn, jeopardy has attached, and this disclosure during the course of trial is so late that it undermines the defendant’s preparation for trial,” Marlowe Sommer said. “There is no way for the court to right this wrong.”
The case was then dismissed with prejudice, which means that a second case cannot be opened against Alec.
Kari Morrissey, the special prosecutor in the case, insisted the ammunition was not linked to the case or hidden from Baldwin’s lawyers, and after the decision she said: "I believe the importance of the evidence was misconstrued by the defense attorneys."
"They buried it," Luke Nikas, a lawyer for Alec, said in court. "They put it under a different case with a different number."
The trial began on Wednesday July 10 where the actor was confronted with footage of Halyna's final moments.
Police body camera footage was played on the trial's opening day, with paramedics heard telling the cinematographer: "Deep breath, Halyna. Deep breath." She tragically died later that same day.
In March, on-set armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who put the live round into the gun, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter.
She is currently serving 18 months in prison, the maximum sentence. Alec was also facing 18 months.
Prosecutor Erlinda O. Johnson had called Alec "reckless" in her opening statement.
She said: "While it was a movie set, it was a real life workplace for many people," before noting: "But you will hear, this workplace was on a tight budget. You will learn that some of the people who were hired to work at this workplace were very inexperienced, and one of those, was the armorer, a very young woman named Hannah Gutierrez-Reed. You will hear testimony from crew members who worked on the set, who will tell you that to them, Ms. Gutierrez's inexperience was obvious."
She claimed that Alec failed to do a safety check with the armorer prior to any time he handled the gun. "You'll hear that the reason he didn't do a safety check, is because he didn't want to offend her," she alleged.
Alec was represented by Alex Spiro, who in his own opening statement declared: "This was an unspeakable tragedy, but Alec Baldwin committed no crime. He was an actor, acting, playing the role of Harland Rust."
He maintained that while there were people on set tasked with keeping the crew safe, and those people "failed in those duties," he emphasized: "Alec Baldwin committed no crime."
This story has been updated with new information as it came in.