A prosecutor has asked a New Mexico judge to reconsider a decision to dismiss a manslaughter charge against Alec Baldwin in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of a Western movie, according to a court filing made public Wednesday.
Special prosecutor Kari Morrissey said there were insufficient facts to support the July ruling and that Baldwin’s due process rights had not been violated.
State District Court Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer dismissed the case mid-trial based on police and prosecutors’ withholding of evidence from the defense in the 2021 shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the film “Rust.”
The charge against Baldwin was dismissed with prejudice, meaning it cannot be revived once all appeals of the decision have been exhausted.
Baldwin, the lead actor and co-producer of “Rust,” was pointing a gun at cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during a rehearsal when the gun went off, killing her and wounding director Joel Souza. Baldwin has said he pulled the hammer, but not the trigger, and the revolver went off.
The piece of evidence that ended the case was a piece of ammunition that a man brought to the sheriff’s office in March and said could be linked to Hutchins’ murder. Prosecutors said they considered the ammunition unrelated and unimportant, while Baldwin’s attorneys argued it had been “buried” and filed a successful motion to dismiss the case.
In her decision to dismiss the Baldwin case, Marlowe Sommer described “serious violations of the discovery process that constitute misconduct” by law enforcement and prosecutors, as well as false testimony about physical evidence by a witness during the trial.
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In the request for reconsideration, Morrissey again argued that the undisclosed ammunition was not relevant to the case against Baldwin, which hinged on his responsibility to handle a gun safely according to known industry guidelines.
“No one on the prosecution team… ever intentionally withheld evidence from the defendant, it simply did not occur to the prosecution that the bullets were relevant to the case even if they were the same or similar to the actual bullets found on the set of ‘Rust,’” Morrissey wrote.
She claimed defense attorneys knew about the rounds but canceled the opportunity to see them before trial.
“This is a smokescreen created by the defense and was intended to influence and confuse the court… and it succeeded,” Morrissey wrote.
Baldwin’s attorney, Luke Nikas, said a response would be filed with the court, without further comment.
Film gunsmith Hannah Gutierrez-Reed is serving an 18-month sentence for involuntary manslaughter. She was accused of violating standard safety protocols and missing multiple opportunities to detect banned live ammunition on set.
Deputy Chief and Safety Coordinator David Halls pleaded no contest to charges of negligent use of a deadly weapon and was sentenced to six months of unsupervised probation. A no contest plea is not an admission of guilt, but is considered as such for sentencing purposes.
It has not been officially determined who brought the live ammunition that killed Hutchins onto the set, though prosecutors allege Gutierrez-Reed was responsible.
The ammunition that caused the case to go haywire was turned over to a Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office crime scene technician, who filed the evidence under an unrelated case number. Three of those bullets resembled real bullets that were collected from the game “Rust” after the fatal shooting.
The mysterious ammunition was left at the sheriff’s office by Troy Teske of Bullhead City, Arizona, who routinely stocked guns and ammunition for his friend and lifelong film gun trainer, Thell Reed, Gutierrez-Reed’s stepfather and mentor as a movie set gunsmith.
Morrissey asked the judge to order defense attorneys to show when and how they learned of the ammunition provided by Teske, calling the defense motion to dismiss the case “a ruse.”
Baldwin’s attorneys have said he didn’t know live ammunition had been brought onto the set and that prosecutors hid evidence as they tried to establish a link between the live ammunition on the set and Gutierrez-Reed. They said prosecutors wanted to make a clear argument that Baldwin should have acknowledged the gunsmith’s clumsy youth and inexperience.
Gutierrez-Reed is seeking to have her manslaughter conviction thrown out based on allegations of suppressed evidence that arose at Baldwin’s trial.
Separately, Gutierrez-Reed has requested a hearing on a proposal to change her plea to guilty in exchange for deferred sentencing on a felony firearms charge related to allegations that she brought a gun to a Santa Fe bar weeks before filming began on “Rust.”
Under the plea deal, Gutierrez-Reed would serve 18 months of supervised probation with the possibility of jail time for violating probation. The terms of the probation agreement, if approved, would prohibit possession of firearms and use of drugs or alcohol and require registration in a criminal justice DNA database.
© 2024 The Canadian Press
