The prosecution's case in Alec Baldwin's 'Rust' trial crumbled
Alec Baldwin and his wife, Hilaria Baldwin, leave District Court, in Santa Fe, N.M., on Wednesday.Roberto E. Rosales / AP
In a scene befitting a Hollywood legal thriller, Alec Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter trial came to an abrupt and stunning end Friday when a judge dismissed the case with prejudice. This decision capped a legal saga that had shadowed the 66-year-old actor’s career and raised questions about the future of gun safety on movie sets.
But how did the prosecution’s case unravel so quickly? NBC News tracked every minute of the abbreviated trial and documented the key moments.
Baldwin’s Team Accused the Prosecution of Hiding Evidence
Baldwin was charged with involuntary manslaughter in the death of Halyna Hutchins, a 42-year-old cinematographer who was fatally shot on the set of the Western film “Rust” in 2021 after a prop gun discharged. Baldwin, who was holding the revolver at the time, pleaded not guilty, stating he believed the weapon was loaded with blanks, not live rounds.
The specific issue that led to the prosecution's downfall emerged on Thursday, the second day of the trial. Alex Spiro, Baldwin’s lead attorney, questioned Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office crime scene technician Marissa Poppell about whether a “good Samaritan” had come forward with ammunition earlier this year.
Poppell confirmed under oath that the sheriff’s office had received Colt .45 rounds from Troy Teske, a former police officer and friend of Thell Reed, the stepfather of “Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed. Teske allegedly dropped off the rounds on the same day Gutierrez-Reed was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in Hutchins’ death and sentenced to 18 months in prison (a decision she is appealing).
Spiro and Baldwin’s other attorneys seized on this revelation, arguing that prosecutors had concealed evidence of ammunition that might have been linked to the fatal shooting. They requested the judge dismiss the case, claiming they should have been able to independently verify the significance of the ammunition brought in by Teske.
The prosecutors insisted that the disputed ammunition was neither hidden from the defense nor connected to the case.
However, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer, after spending an hour Friday listening to witnesses and considering the motion to dismiss, ultimately sided with Baldwin’s lawyers.
“The late discovery of this evidence during the trial has impeded the effective use of evidence in such a way that it has impacted the fundamental fairness of the proceedings,” Sommer said from the bench. “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.”
“There is no way for the court to right this wrong,” she added. “The sanction of dismissal is the only warranted remedy.” Sommer dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled.
Baldwin sobbed and put his face in his hands as Sommer announced her decision. He could have faced an 18-month prison sentence if convicted.
Kari Morrissey, one of the lead prosecutors, told reporters after the dismissal that she respected the court’s decision but maintained there was “absolutely no evidence that any of that ammunition is related to the incident involving” Hutchins.
“There is no reason to believe that the evidence that we discussed in court today was related to the set of ‘Rust,’” she said. “It never left the state of Arizona.”
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Early Legal Victory for Baldwin’s Team
Even before the sudden conclusion of the “Rust” trial, Baldwin’s team scored an early legal victory. The day before the trial officially began, Judge Sommer ruled that Baldwin’s role as a co-producer of “Rust” was not relevant to his involuntary manslaughter trial.
Judge Sommer’s decision dealt a significant blow to a key element of the prosecutors’ strategy. They had planned to argue that Baldwin’s role as co-producer gave him special responsibility on the set, including on October 21, 2021, the day Hutchins was shot inside a church set at the Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe County.
“I’m having real difficulty with the state’s position that they want to show that as a producer he didn’t follow guidelines and therefore as an actor, Mr. Baldwin did all of these things wrong that resulted in the death of Ms. Hutchins because as a producer he allowed these things to happen,” Sommer said at a pretrial hearing Monday. “I’m denying evidence of his status as a producer,” she concluded.
Contrasting Depictions of Baldwin in Opening Statements
In his 44-year acting career, Baldwin has played both villains and heroes. In opening statements on Wednesday, lawyers on both sides of the “Rust” case presented contrasting portrayals of the actor to the jury.
Spiro told jurors that Hutchins’ death was an “unspeakable tragedy” but maintained that his client “committed no crime.”
“He was an actor, acting,” Spiro said.
Spiro argued that Baldwin could not be found guilty of involuntary manslaughter because prop guns are rarely loaded with live ammunition. He explained that actors typically shoot blanks out of real guns and that Baldwin was simply following industry norms.
“I don’t have to tell you more about this because you’ve all seen gunfights in movies,” Spiro said. (Baldwin stars in “Rust” as a fictional outlaw named Harland Rust. The movie was completed after the fatal shooting but has not yet been released.)
Special prosecutor Erlinda Ocampo Johnson, in her opening statement, asserted that Baldwin skipped safety checks and recklessly handled the gun that killed Hutchins, “a vibrant 42-year-old rising star.” She argued that Baldwin “did his own thing.”
“The evidence will show that someone who played make-believe with a real gun and violated the cardinal rules of firearm safety is the defendant, Alexander Baldwin,” Ocampo Johnson said. Ocampo Johnson abruptly resigned from the case on Friday, before it was dismissed.
Bodycam Video Captures Chaos After Shooting
The first witness to take the stand on Wednesday was Nicholas Lefleur, the first law enforcement officer to arrive at the Bonanza Creek Ranch after the shooting. The jury was shown video footage from a body camera worn by Lefleur, who was then a Santa Fe County sheriff’s deputy.
The video depicted first responders scrambling to help Hutchins inside the film set’s church in the frantic minutes after the gun went off. In the video, a medic can be heard asking Hutchins whether she can open her eyes as she was wheeled out of the church on a stretcher and loaded into an ambulance.
The wrenching imagery underscored the shock of the shooting, which sent shockwaves through the entertainment industry and beyond.
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