Judge denies Alec Baldwin’s plea to dismiss fatal film set shooting case

A judge on Friday denied another request from Alec Baldwin to dismiss the charge against him in the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who was fatally shot on the set of Rust in 2021.

Baldwin, a lead actor and co-producer on the western, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the shooting and is set to face trial early next month. His attorneys argued that the state knowingly failed to preserve crucial evidence in the case that might have exonerated Baldwin and asked that the charges be dismissed.

Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer ruled against the defence, finding that Baldwin’s attorneys failed to establish that the state had acted in bad faith. Baldwin will still stand trial in July.

FBI testing heavily damaged the firearm before Baldwin’s team was able to examine it for any potential modifications and authorities failed to photograph the individual elements of the firearm beforehand, the defence had argued. The defence had also accused prosecutors of withholding evidence that the revolver Baldwin used on set was damaged at the time of the incident and described the state’s conduct as “outrageous” and “egregious”.

“They understood that this was potential exculpatory evidence and they destroyed it anyway,” Attorney John Bash said during a hearing on Monday. “They knew it would be destroyed and they did nothing to preserve the evidence for the defendant.”

The prosecution had said that parts of the gun were still available to the defence. “The fact that this gun was unfortunately damaged does not deprive the defendant of ability to question the evidence,” prosecutor Erlinda Johnson said during a hearing on Monday.

In her ruling, Judge Sommer said that the defence did not establish that the state acted in bad faith when its testing destroyed the weapon and that the evidence didn’t show the state knew the gun had “exculpatory value”.

The judge did rule that prosecutors must disclose to the jury the “destructive nature of the firearm testing, the resulting loss and its relevance and import”.

A hearing on the matter on Monday saw tense exchanges between the prosecution and the defence. Kari Morrissey, the special prosecutor, repeatedly referred to Baldwin’s attorneys as “these people”. Meanwhile, both parties expressed concern about the length of the trial, which is set to run nine days.

The judge’s decision comes two months after Judge Sommer sentenced Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the film’s weapons supervisor, to the maximum of 1.5 years at a state penitentiary on an involuntary manslaughter conviction. Gutierrez-Reed mistakenly loaded a live round into the revolver Baldwin used in the film.

She was responsible for ensuring the safety of weapons on set but failed to do so. Baldwin fatally shot Hutchins during an October 21st, 2021, rehearsal when he pointed his gun at the cinematographer and the weapon fired the live round as she set up a camera shot. The FBI and an independent firearms expert found the gun functioned normally and would not fire without the trigger depressed, but Baldwin’s defense team has argued that the firearm was prone to malfunctioning.

Baldwin’s attorneys said the prosecution improperly withheld an expert’s report that showed “unexplained tool marks” on the portion of the trigger mechanism that holds the hammer in place.

Prosecutors dismissed an earlier involuntary manslaughter charge against Baldwin last year after being told the gun he was holding might have been modified before the shooting and malfunctioned. They sought to charge him again after a new analysis of the gun last year.