The protracted and high-profile legal case against Alec Baldwin is closed as the prosecution has not presented all the evidence, the court ruled. The case will not be reopened and the actor will walk free.
In March, a box of ammunition was delivered to the police station in Santa Fe. According to the man who left the box, the ammunition could be linked to the cartridges used when Alec Baldwin accidentally shot a person to death on the set of the movie “Rust”.
Neither the police nor the prosecutor, who were shown a photo, found any similarity between these and the cartridges in the case. Hence, the evidence was not adduced during the trial.
However, the box returned during the trial and the judge himself examined the cartridges. If the cartridges matched, this could be an explanation for how the live ammunition ended up on the film set.
There was a similarity to the cartridges in the case, the judge noted, then sent the jury home and questioned the prosecutor about why the ammunition was not among the evidence.
Thought the revolver was “cold”
According to witnesses and Alec Baldwin, production had said that the revolver he was provided with was “cold” – meaning it is not loaded with live ammunition – when he was supposed to practice a shooting scene.
When Baldwin pulls the revolver from the holster and fires at the camera, however, a bullet is fired that kills the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
The film’s gunman Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was sentenced to 18 months in prison for causing the death of another.
Alec Baldwin Trial
The prosecutor testified
It was a family friend of gun handler Hannah Gutierrez-Reed who turned the box of ammunition over to Santa Fe police.
But because the ammunition was not connected to the case, Baldwin’s defense never got to see the potential evidence. The judge therefore sent the jury home because it could be a miscarriage of justice if all the evidence was not presented to the defense.
Prosecutor Kari Morrissey chose to call herself as a witness.
Kari Morrissey said on the witness stand that she had been given a picture of the ammunition in question before it was turned in to the police station. She believed the ammunition was not similar to the one in the Baldwin case and therefore did not connect them. Once the ammunition was handed in, she stuck to her earlier assessment.
However, the judge was of a different opinion:
– The withholding of this information was intentional, the judge said and dropped the entire case.
“There is no way for the court to remedy this error,” said Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer, according to the New York Times.
The court case cannot be reopened, but Alec Baldwin also faces civil lawsuits, including from the husband of the slain Halyna Hutchins.
