Charges dropped in Alec Baldwin’s manslaughter case after new evidence emerges

Alec Baldwin has had the case against him dismissed after the Judge determined that the prosecution had withheld evidence.

“There is no way for the court to right this wrong,” Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer said in court 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 against the accusation of involuntary manslaughter.

In 2021, a gun he was rehearsing with while on the set of the movie “Rust” fired a live round, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. Baldwin 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 containing previously unexamined evidence. She examined it from the bench, and lawyers for Baldwin called for the case to be dismissed.

The defense had asked to review all ballistic evidence.

“They buried it,” Luke Nikas, a lawyer for Baldwin, 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. 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. Baldwin was also facing 18 months.

Police body camera footage was played on the trial’s opening day, with paramedics heard telling the cinematographer: “Deep breath, Halyna. Deep breath.” She died later that same day.

Prosecutor Erlinda O. Johnson had called Baldwin “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 Baldwin 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.