Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer said in her ruling that prosecutors had failed to properly inform defense lawyers of live ammunition in their possession, which may have been connected to the shooting. “The state’s woeful withholding of this information was intentional and deliberate,” she said.
The actor had been on trial for involuntary manslaughter since Tuesday, as prosecutors argued that his reckless handling of a prop gun on the set of the low-budget western made him responsible for fatal shooting.
Baldwin’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the case late Thursday, alleging that prosecutors hid evidence that could have helped determine the source of the live round found in Baldwin’s revolver, on a film set where only blanks were supposed to be used.
The potential evidence in question was a collection of rounds in the possession of Troy Teske, a friend of the “Rust” armorer’s stepfather, Thell Reed. Teske gave the live rounds to personnel at the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office earlier this year, after armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed’s involuntary manslaughter trial concluded with her conviction. The defense claimed that knowledge of the rounds had not been shared with them, despite their request to examine all ballistic evidence.
“The State is attempting to establish a link between Baldwin and the source of the live ammunition. The only way it can do that is by demonstrating that the live rounds were brought to the set by the movie’s armorer, given the State’s assertion that Baldwin should have been aware of her youth and inexperience and therefore the possibility that she brought live rounds to the set,” the defense team wrote in its motion. “The State not only failed to disclose the evidence—it affirmatively hid it under a file number that is unaffiliated with the Rust case.”
When the concerns were brought up in court on Friday, the judge donned a pair of blue gloves, cut open the manilla packet containing the ammunition and asked for a crime scene technician to identify each of the rounds. As Sommer questioned the technician, it was revealed that at least one of the bullets was similar to a dummy round found on the “Rust” set.
After the judge sent the jury home Friday to look into the matter, special prosecutor Kari Morrissey called herself as a witness, testifying that the ammunition in question did not match live ammunition collected from the “Rust” set, and had never been brought to New Mexico — let alone the film set — prior to the shooting.
The defense was aware of the ammunition in question, Morrissey argued, but the rounds weren’t formally presented to the defense team as evidence because they did not appear to match the rounds that were found on the set of the western. “This has no evidentiary value whatsoever,” she said.
But Sommer thought otherwise, and the judge excoriated the prosecution in her ruling.
“If this conduct does not rise to the level of bad faith, it certainly comes so near to bad faith as to show signs of scorching prejudice,” she said in her ruling. She said that Baldwin’s defense team should have been made aware of the ammunition earlier, and it was now too late for them to incorporate it into their defense. Therefore, not even the declaration of a mistrial could remedy the situation; the case had to be dismissed with prejudice — meaning Baldwin cannot be retried.
As Sommer began laying down her reasoning for dismissing the trial, Baldwin’s sister, Beth Keuchler, began sobbing in the stands.
The actor himself – who had for much of the proceedings maintained an unfazed and calm demeanor – put his face in his hands, then embraced his attorneys and wife. He later left court without taking questions from the dozens of reporters the case had drawn into New Mexico.
The dismissal marks the prosecutorial team’s second major misstep in Baldwin’s case. He was initially charged, along with the movie’s armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, of two counts of involuntary manslaughter in January 2023 — more than a year after the shooting. But about three months later, the charges against the actor were dropped after “new facts were revealed that demand further investigation and forensic analysis,” prosecutors said at the time, noting that the charges could be refiled.
In January, a grand jury indicted Baldwin with involuntary manslaughter once again, leading to the trial that was tossed out Friday.
William Triplett in New Mexico contributed to this report, which has been updated.
