Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer dismissed the involuntary manslaughter case due to errors caused by the prosecution’s handling of evidence.
Baldwin faced accusations “negligence for accidentally firing a live round into the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, on the set of the movie Rust in October 2021 and killing her.”
Sommer said the mistakes “impacted the fundamental fairness of the case.”
From The Daily Mail:
The extraordinary decision came after a day-long hearing without the jury present over bullets that should have been in evidence.Baldwin’s lawyers claimed they were ‘concealed’ from them and ‘buried’ in another case file.The issue had upended the trial for Baldwin, 66, who pleaded not guilty to two counts of involuntary manslaughter.
Sommer demanded the bullets in court. She then put on gloves and inspected them.
Baldwin’s lawyer Luke Nikas claimed former police officer Troy Teske handed over the bullets to the Santa Fe police:
Teske claimed they were the same kind that were used to shoot Hutchins.Nikas claimed that prosecutors ‘buried’ this evidence by giving it a different case number to the main Rust investigation.As a result, when Baldwin’s lawyers went to the police to view all the Rust ammunition in April, they were not shown it, a breach of evidentiary rules.Prosecutor Kari Morrissey said that they had interviewed Teske last year and were skeptical of him because he is close friends with Thell Reed, the father of Gutierrez-Reed.Morrissey said they concluded Teskey was sending them on a ‘wild goose chase’ to point the blame at somebody other than Gutierrez-Reed.
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