Alec Baldwin Jury Sent Home As Lawyers Spar Over Defense Dismissal Motion & Mysterious Bullet Evidence; Trial To Resume Monday
The twists and turns of Alec Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter trial for the fatal 2021 shooting of Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins just took a serpentine curve.
In a surprise move on what was expected to be a long day of testimony, including potentially incarcerated Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the judge in the case has sent the jury home after mere minutes in the courtroom.
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“I’m going to recess you for the day,” announced Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer to the jurors in the Santa Fe County, NM, courthouse this morning.
“I’m sorry. Trials are fluid. It’s not something we predicted,” Sommer added, forgetting it was Friday for a moment and asking the jury to return “tomorrow morning” before correcting herself and saying she would see them Monday. With the jury not present, the defense and Special Prosecutors Kari Morrissey and Erlinda Johnson are expect to argue soon in front on the judge on a new effort by Baldwin’s team to get the trial tossed later Friday. Potentially, if the motion were granted, it could see Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed’s own involuntary manslaughter conviction overturned — potentially being the operative term.
Hutchins was killed and Rust director Joel Souza was injured on October 21, 2021 after the Colt .45 Baldwin was pointing at the cinematographer shot off a live round during a rehearsal at the Bonanza Creek Ranch near Santa Fe. Re-charged with involuntary manslaughter in January, exactly a year after he was charged the first time and after a plea deal fell apart, Baldwin entered a not guilty plea in the weeks afterward.
Despite theories from Baldwin and Gutierrez-Reed defense lawyers over the years since Hutchins was killed, no one has ever completely explained how live rounds got on the set of Rust and in the guns of Baldwin, fellow actor Jensen Ackles (who wasn’t a part of the resurrected Rust made last year) and others. A witness in Gutierrez-Reed’s trial and set to testify in Baldwin’s trial, Rust ammunition supplier Seth Kenney has long postulated that the relatively inexperienced armorer’s industry vet father has tried to put the blame on him, even after police and prosecutors rejected that theory.
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Set to be in court every day for the week-and-a-half trial, as he was Friday, Baldwin faces up to 18 months behind bars himself and some big fines if found guilty. Now starting to run behind, the trial was set to end on July 19 for the jury to go into deliberations.
That schedule might have to be adjusted after what happened today.
The unusual move by the rarely flustered Judge Sommer comes just over 12 hours after Baldwin’s attorneys at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan filed another motion to dismiss the case against the 30 Rock Emmy winner. Unlike previous such motions over the years, which obviously have been unsuccessful, this eleventh-hour filing has thrown a serious spanner into the prosecution’s usually buttoned-up works with accusations of a cover-up or intentional incompetence.
“Simply put, the State was provided highly exculpatory evidence that supports Baldwin’s argument of intervening cause; it also supports Baldwin’s case that the SFSO’s investigation was biased, improperly motivated, and incompetent, which the Court has already ruled is relevant and admissible,” says the motion to dismiss filed late Thursday. “Yet the State concealed that evidence from Baldwin, and then it misrepresented the evidence that it had collected. This conduct is egregious and requires dismissal.”
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“You’ve given them more than enough opportunities, Your Honor,” declared Baldwin defense lawyer Luke Nikas early Friday of the prosecution in a sometimes testy hearing with the jury not present. “It is not the first time, it’s not the second time, it’s not even the third time. It’s time for this case to be dismissed!”
Blunt as usual, Morrissey replied in her own time at the microphone, saying, “There has been no violation in our obligation as prosecutors.”
Along with hearing testimony from Alessandro Pietta, the man who made the Colt .45 replica that Baldwin was holding that killed Hutchins and wounded Souza, the court and jury on June 11 also heard from Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department crime scene technician Marissa Poppell. In their exchange — which continued to some extent Friday, with Poppell being called back to testify in the motion hearing earlier in the day — nimble Baldwin lawyer Alex Spiro all but accused Poppell, and by direct implication the state, of suppressing evidence.
As is claimed in the defense motion put in the court docket on Thursday night, Baldwin’s team described a “good Samaritan” who came into the County building and then the Sheriff’s office just a few weeks ago, after Gutierrez-Reed was sentenced to 18 months in a state prison on her own involuntary manslaughter charges out of the Rust tragedy. That individual turns out to be ex-Arizona police officer Troy Teske, a very close friend of Gutierrez-Reed’s father Thell Reed, the legendary Hollywood on-set gun coach and armorer.
The defense claims it never was properly informed of Teske and the bullets he dropped off despite requesting all police information and files related to the shooting at the Bonanza Creek Ranch location near Santa Fe.
“The SFSO and the State have concealed from Baldwin that there was evidence that the live round came from Seth Kenney, a known person of interest and supplier of ammunition to the Rust set,” exclaims the motion to dismiss.
It is worth noting that Baldwin is not accused nor has the multiple Emmy winner ever been suspected of bringing those live rounds on the set of the troubled indie Western.