Judge Decides To End Alec Baldwin's 'Rust' Case Once And For All

Actor Alec Baldwin will no longer head back to a courtroom over the October 2021 death of "Rust" cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who passed away on the set of the Western film.

A gun that the "30 Rock" actor had been holding for a scene went off, fatally shooting Hutchins and hospitalizing director Joel Souza. "Rust" armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was charged with involuntary manslaughter after prosecutors accused her of mixing live ammunition with the dummy rounds, leading to the fatal accident.

The trial ended on the third day of witness testimony in July when Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer decided that the prosecutors had buried evidence in what she determined to be a clear violation of the Brady rule. However, special prosecutor Kari Morrissey filed a motion urging the judge to reconsider and bring Baldwin back on trial once more.

Although the trial ended in July, special prosecutor Kari Morrissey filed a motion over a month later urging the judge to reconsider and bring Baldwin back on trial once more. However, the judge determined that the case was over and that Alec Baldwin would no longer be facing criminal charges for the death of Halyna Hutchins.

In a filing dated October 24, Judge Sommer wrote, “Considering the arguments of the State set forth in the Amended Motion and Reply, the Court concludes that the State does not raise any factual or legal arguments that would justify the grant of a motion to reconsider." She went on to say, "Therefore, the Amended Motion is not well taken and should be denied.”

However, sources tell Deadline, who was the first to announce the news, that special prosecutor Kari Morrissey plans to appeal this decision as well.

On October 21, 2021, a gun that the actor was holding on the set of the Western film went off, striking and killing Halyna Hutchins and hospitalizing director Joel Souza. Although a forensic examination done by the FBI concluded that the trigger had to be pulled for the gun to fire, Baldwin has maintained that he never pulled the trigger.

Baldwin was initially charged in January 2023, but those charges were dropped in April 2023 pending further investigation on the firearm. In January 2024, the charges were refiled. Alec Baldwin submitted a not guilty plea following a statement from his attorneys that declared that they “will fight these charges” and would “win,” although Baldwin and other “Rust” producers are still facing several civil lawsuits outside of his criminal trial.

Before the trial even began, the actor’s legal team had been filing motions in order to get the case dropped and prevent Baldwin from ever stepping inside a courtroom. Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer struck down the one motion filed on June 28 after his defense team argued that the actor’s “due process” had been violated when the gun was damaged due to testing by the FBI.

“Government agents knew that the firearm would not survive their clumsy ‘tests’ intact. They said so explicitly in emails,” Baldwin’s lawyers wrote in a motion filed on May 6.

“But at the insistence of prosecutors eager to prove a celebrity’s guilt, they nevertheless blundered ahead without preserving the original state of the firearm through photographs, video or other means; without informing Baldwin or his counsel they were conducting destructive testing; and without any realistic prospect that bludgeoning the gun would reveal whether Baldwin had pulled the trigger on the day of the accident,” they continued, adding that “the destruction of potentially exculpatory evidence violates due process.”

In her response, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer insisted that there was no proof that the State of New Mexico acted in bad faith when they had the gun submitted for testing. "The Court finds and concludes that Defendant fails to establish that the State acted in bad faith when destroying certain internal components of the firearm in the course of the accidental discharge testing," Judge Sommer wrote at the time.

"In other words, the evidence before the Court does not demonstrate that the State or its agents knew that the unaltered firearm possessed exculpatory value at the time of accidental discharge testing, and nonetheless destroyed it, thereby indicating that the evidence may have exonerated the Defendant," she continued.

Sommer warned that prosecutors "must fully disclose the destructive nature of the firearm testing, the resulting loss, and its relevance and import to the jury” and went on to say that “The State must examine appropriate witnesses to achieve this disclosure. In addition, Defendant remains entitled to cross-examination of the State's witnesses, to further accomplish this remedy."

However, the state of the firearm seemed to be of little consequence after a crime scene technician testified that there was ammunition turned over by a friend of Gutierrez-Reed's father, Thell Reed, that had not been handed over to the defense. As such, Judge Sommer decided that the only appropriate remedy was to dismiss the case with prejudice.

Alec Baldwin had been facing up to 18 months behind bars if convicted.