SANTA FE, N.M. — Alec Baldwin‘s lawyers have filed a surprise motion asking that his manslaughter case be thrown out because the state failed to turn over a batch of bullets to the defense. Update: Baldwin’s case has been dismissed.
In a dramatic moment on Friday morning, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer donned a pair of blue gloves to open an envelope containing the bullets, and had them spread on a table. Though prosecutor Kari Morrissey had asserted that the bullets did not match the fatal round, at least some of them were Starline Brass rounds with silver primers — matching the characteristics of the live bullets found on the set of “Rust.”
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The judge then sent the jury home for the weekend to allow for further exploration of the defense motion.
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Attorney Luke Nikas argued that the failure to turn over relevant evidence was part of a broader pattern of disclosure violations by the prosecution, and said that enough is enough.
“This is over and over and over again,” Nikas said. “This is not the first time. This is not the second time. It’s not the third time. It’s time for this case to be dismissed.”
Baldwin is on trial for shooting cinematographer Halyna Hutchins while filming “Rust” at the Bonanza Creek Ranch, near Santa Fe, in 2021. He was unaware that his gun contained a live round, and the source of the live bullets has been a key mystery ever since.
Troy Teske, a former police officer, turned in a batch of bullets to the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office in March, and said they would match the fatal round.
On Thursday, defense attorney Alex Spiro questioned a crime scene technician about why the bullets had not been made available to the defense before the trial, and accused the detectives of “burying” the evidence. The defense filed a seven-page motion on Thursday night seeking to dismiss the case.
At a hearing on the motion on Friday morning, prosecutor Kari Morrissey argued that detectives had determined early in the case that Teske’s bullets were not a match.
“This is a wild goose chase,” Morrissey said. “This has no evidentiary value whatsoever.”
Marlowe Sommer then asked to see the bullets. After opening the envelope, she had Marissa Poppell, the crime scene technician, go through them one by one.
Some of them were BHA rounds, and others were Winchesters. But some did have the distinctive Starline Brass logo — two stars joined by a crescent. Without further analysis, Poppell said she could not be certain that the bullets were an exact match for the fatal bullet.
Spiro argued that the defense never got the opportunity to do such analysis.
After the bullets were displayed on the table, Morrissey told the court she had never seen them before.
But she argued that if they do match the fatal bullet, that would only be further confirmation of the prosecution’s theory that armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed brought the live bullets to set.
Marlowe Sommer did not rule on the defense motion Friday morning, and indicated she would hear additional testimony from the state. The hearing on the defense motion was held without the jury present.
The judge then called the jurors in and expectedly dismissed them for the day, telling them to return on Monday.
One alternative, short of dismissal, would be for the judge to issue an instruction to the jurors, saying that they could infer that the state withheld the bullets because they knew they would be helpful to the defense.
Another possibility would be to delay the case to allow the defense a full opportunity to examine the evidence. Nikas argued that would not suffice in this case, because the trial has already started and decisions about defense strategy have already been made.
The judge rejected a pre-trial defense motion to throw out the case over alleged disclosure violations, finding the defense had not been unfairly prejudiced.
After a lunch break, the prosecution called Seth Kenney, the man who supplied dummies and guns to “Rust,” to testify about the bullet issue. As he had done at the Gutierrez Reed trial earlier this year, he denied providing live bullets to the set.
Spiro cross-examined him, going over his text messages and arguing that Kenney did in fact supply the live bullets inadvertently.