At 10:15 AM (MT) on Friday, 16 jurors were dismissed for the weekend in one of the most high-profile trials in the state’s history. Although they thought they would be returning on Monday, they were informed by the court that their service had ended.
On Friday, July 12, the judge in the Rust case dropped the involuntary manslaughter charge against Alec Baldwin immediately bringing him to tears.
Before the jury was brought into the courtroom that day, the third day of the trial, Baldwin’s attorney Luke Nikas asked for the case against his client to be dropped, claiming that prosecutors sat on evidence that would have helped shed light onto how live ammunition was brought on to the set of the Western movie in 2021.
“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 Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer, explaining, in part, her decision to dismiss the case with prejudice.
Prosecutors said they deemed the ammo unrelated and unimportant, while Baldwin’s lawyers alleged they “buried” it and filed a motion to dismiss the case.
On Thursday, jurors in the Santa Fe trial heard about a theory on the ammunition — and a so-called good Samaritan who came forward to investigators in the last few months purporting to have evidence of that theory — from Baldwin’s defense attorney Alex Spiro.
The judge’s decision ended the criminal culpability of the 30 Rock actor after a nearly three-year saga that began when 66-year-old Baldwin was rehearsing a scene on the set of the movie when the gun he was holding discharged, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injuring director Joel Souza. Baldwin insisted in interviews he did not pull the trigger of the gun or know why it contained live ammunition.
“Our goal from the beginning was to seek justice for Halyna Hutchins,” District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies said in a statement. “We are disappointed that the case did not get to the jury.”
Although the unexpected evidence might not have mattered in Baldwin’s case, as the charges did not allege that he was responsible for the deadly rounds being on set, the defense’s lack of access to it was deemed egregious enough to warrant a dismissal.
In the end, Alec and his wife, Hilaria Baldwin, hugged several times, relieved that his case was not progressing any further.