Actor Alec Baldwin’s manslaughter trial was dismissed Friday.
The dismissal revolved around arguments from the defense that the prosecution did not share evidence about ammunition in its possession.
According to CNN, the case was dismissed with prejudice, which means that it cannot be brought again.
In October 2021, on the set of his film “Rust,” Baldwin fired the gun that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounded director Joel Souza. He had been charged with involuntary manslaughter. Baldwin has said publicly he never pulled the trigger on the gun.
BREAKING: Actor Alec Baldwin’s criminal case has been dismissed after new evidence emerged that wasn’t disclosed to the defense.
Baldwin was seen sobbing when the announcement was made.
“One of the two special prosecutors in the Alec Baldwin trial, prosecutor Erlindo Ocampo… pic.twitter.com/3pyetXwDZQ
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Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the film’s armorer, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in connection with a live round being in a gun that should not have had real ammunition.
“The sanction of dismissal is the only warranted remedy” in the case, First Judicial District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer said, according to NBC.
“There is no way for the court to right this wrong,” Sommer said, according to The New York Times.
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The dismissal followed an envelope containing the ammunition being brought into court. Sommer donned latex gloves, cut open the envelope and examined the ammunition.
“They buried it,” Baldwin attorney Luke Nikas said. “They put it under a different case with a different number.”
Baldwin buried his face in his hands and sobbed as the ruling was made, according to NBC. He also hugged his wife, Hilaria, according to the Daily Mail.
Baldwin’s lawyers said the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office had live rounds in its possession but did not record them as evidence or tell Baldwin’s legal team they had the rounds.
Marissa Poppell, a sheriff’s office crime scene technician, had initially said in court that the evidence was not hidden and questioned the claim that the ammunition matched the kind that killed Hutchins.
The Times report said after the ammunition was delivered to the court, “it became clear some resembled the ammunition collected on the set.”
Special prosecutor Kari Morrissey said she had never seen anything about the rounds until they appeared in court.
“I never saw them until today,”she said.
The Colt .45 rounds in question were delivered to the sheriff’s office in March by a friend of Thell Reed, the stepfather of Gutierrez-Reed, on the day she was convicted.
NBC reported that Morrissey had earlier argued the bullets were not a match for the ones in the gun that fired the bullet that killed Hutchins and called the claims from the defense a “wild goose chase that has no evidentiary value whatsoever.”
