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Alec Baldwin’s manslaughter case over the tragic accidental death of Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was dismissed in July mere days after it had begun. Alec’s defense lawyers argued that the prosecution had withheld evidence. Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer agreed that there was no just, legal way for the trial to continue based on the prosecution’s blunder, so she went ahead and dismissed the case “with prejudice,” meaning the case could never be reopened against Alec. Well, it seems special prosecutor Kari T. Morrissey didn’t get the memo; late last week she submitted a 52-page motion asking Judge Sommer to reopen the case against Alec anyway, for reasons. What, because you get one free backsies on a “with prejudice” dismissal during a leap year? (Ok I looked it up: a case dismissed with prejudice can be appealed to a higher court, but not brought back to the same court… like what’s just happened here.) And of course, in describing the circumstances surrounding the critical evidence, Morrissey shares details that only make things look more incriminating.
The origins of the withheld evidence sound fishy: A former police officer who lives in Arizona had months earlier delivered nearly two dozen .45-caliber rounds to the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department, saying they might have been related to the “Rust” shooting 2½ years earlier that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. The former officer, Troy Teske, is a friend of Thell Reed, a noted Hollywood armorer and father of “Rust” weapons handler Hannah Gutierrez, who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in March in the shooting. Teske was scheduled to be a witness in her trial but Gutierrez’s defense attorney decided not to call Teske to testify.
And most of this doesn’t add up either: After the Gutierrez trial and before leaving Santa Fe, Teske turned over the ammunition he had brought to New Mexico to local sheriff’s deputies. The casings of three of the rounds appeared to match the fatal bullet in the “Rust” movie set shooting, deputies later testified. During Baldwin’s trial, the Santa Fe County sheriff’s crime scene technician testified that she took the rounds from Teske and placed them into evidence storage. However, the rounds were not included as part of the “Rust” shooting evidence, later testimony showed. Instead the ammunition was filed under a different case number — a fact that Baldwin’s attorneys pounced on as evidence that the state was allegedly hiding material that might have been helpful to Baldwin’s defense.
Throwing arguments at a wall to see what sticks? In her 52-page motion, Morrissey argued that defense attorneys knew more about the Teske rounds than she did. She wrote the situation surrounding the rounds did not rise to a level that warranted Marlowe Sommer’s dismissal of the case with prejudice, meaning it could not be refiled. Morrissey asserted that the tardy disclosure of the Teske rounds did not hamper Baldwin’s defense because his attorneys apparently knew about the ammunition before the trial. Morrissey also argued the rounds were unrelated to the charges that Baldwin faced.
Mistakes were made: Morrissey also wrote in her motion that the crime scene technician, Marissa Poppell, was not trying to mislead the judge when she testified that the Teske rounds were dissimilar to the ones uncovered on the “Rust” movie set in October 2021. “She provided mistaken and inaccurate testimony because people occasionally make mistakes,” Morrissey wrote. … Morrissey said the judge should have considered less severe remedies, such as declaring a mistrial to give Baldwin’s team the opportunity to inspect the rounds and have them tested by the FBI.
So in a nutshell, Morrissey is saying that what her prosecutorial team did was no biggie and actually Alec’s lawyers did know about the evidence and it doesn’t matter anyway because it’s not relevant but even so the judge’s ruling was too harsh and a mistake so please reverse it and let’s start take two on this trial. Yes? But like I said before, what I find startling are all the curious details she includes. It’s always been highly sus that the person (Troy Teske) who turned in the new evidence — two and a half years later — just so happens to be a family friend of Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the convicted armorer. But Morrissey’s motion further reveals that Teske was supposed to testify at Hannah’s trial, and then only turned over the evidence after that trial was over in March. And he’s a former police officer?! Does that not also entirely deflate Hannah’s attempt to get her conviction thrown out? Her lawyers filed a motion to have it dismissed on the same grounds as Alec Baldwin, the withheld evidence. But the evidence was turned over by her family friend, who waited to turn it over to police until after he thought he’d be testifying at her trial. Please tell me what I am missing. Meanwhile, as Hannah awaits her hearing on the motion to dismiss, she’s also just agreed to plead guilty to a charge of bringing a gun into a Santa Fe bar. She’ll serve 18 months of supervised probation from home when she’s released from prison.
Oh geez give it up
That won’t happen. The court has ruled. That prosecutor needs to take a seat and leave an exonerated citizen alone.
@the robinsons
In the sense that they aren’t gonna get him
I think the super-fishy circumstances surrounding the “evidence” in question is what makes the prosecution’s request to reopen the case legitimate, rather than more incriminating against the prosecution, as this commentary suggests?
So, years after the shooting occurs, a police officer who had nothing to do with the film or the shooting, but who IS friends with one of the accused, somehow comes across a box of ammunition that might exonerate one/both of the accused? Sounds fishy AF indeed – but not on the part of the prosecution, on the part of the defense instead (sounds totally made up to help the defendants.)
And the fact that this Officer Family Friend was supposed to testify on behalf of Gutierrez but the DEFENSE decided not to call him up means that even the defense recognized he was not a reliable witness for some reason (full of BS? Had no real connection to the case beyond being a family friend? Don’t know – but if they thought he would help Gutierrez’s case, they would have called him to the stand for sure.)
So all of this makes it sound like this “evidence” that’s supposed to help the defense is fishy as heck, has a dodgy chain of custody (where was this box of ammunition for the first few years after the shooting? How did Officer Family Friend come upon it so late in the game?), etc. – which to me makes it sound absolutely like it is evidence that should have been dismissed, and is more incriminating of the defense than the proscution, which is why it makes sense to me that the prosecution would seek to reopen the trial.
That said…I will not understand why the prosecution, once they knew about the dodgy evidence (it sounds like the initial misfiling of it was done by someone unconnected to the case) didn’t not only do everything by-the-book, but also investigate its circumstances, since it sure seems like someone planted the evidence in order to create a mistrial.
Unless…what if the officer who misfiled Officer Family Friend’s highly suspicious “evidence” is ALSO a family friend of Gutierrez, and did it to help get the case thrown out? Once Baldwin’s case was dismissed with prejudice back, articles immediately popped up suggesting Gutierrez’s lawyers would seek to have her conviction thrown out as well, on the same grounds…
Something is dodgy about this case, for sure.
Wtf. This is ridiculous and a horrible display of bad legal practice on the prosecution side. Alec Baldwin is many things. But I don’t for a second believe he is a murderer. This was a horrible awful accident.
I also think they should move on, but to be fair to the prosecutor, a woman died for no reason whatsoever. You don’t have to think of those responsible as murderers — gross negilgence leads to death all the time. I have no opinion about Alec’s contribution to the death of the person who died since I haven’t seen the evidence, but plenty of people who don’t think of themselves as murderers end up killing people because they make “terrible mistakes.” And many of those people are and should be charged.
But that prosecutor has already proven to be awful and needs to move on.
The burden is always on prosecution to prove guilt. They fucked up this case themselves by being unserious and doing shady things with evidence inclusion. The prosecution wants a horse and pony show, if this was about the victim, they would go out if their way to protect the integrity of the process, not destroy it themselves.
They need to take the L and move on.
The US criminal justice system has a poor reputation, largely due in part to the poorly trained police and prosecutors. From OJ to Casey Anthony to Trump and now this, prosecutors don’t seem to know what the hell they are supposed to be doing, or how to do it.
Electing prosecutors just guarantees that they will make political decisions. Plenty of amazing prosecutors, but too much politics makes the process perverse.
Can we talk about these bullets being ‘dropped off’ by the armorer’s father’s friend? Right after she got convicted. Who is a retired cop. Was supposed to testify for her, but her defense attorney decided no, at the last minute. This friend doesn’t sound suspicious at all…
Yes, the prosecution is incompetent, but I wonder who Baldwin’s attorney paid to get this ammo snafu, found out? started? messed up? It just seems very convenient.
There’s no conspiracy or payoff here, for the simple reason that Baldwin would have only benefitted from Teske, Gutierrez-Reed’s family friend turning over the bullets and them becoming evidence during her trial. It furhter establishes the bullets in the gun were known to her, likely brought by her, and then possibly, secretly removed from the set by her (ending up with her father and/or his friend, ultimately). At the very least, they strongly suggest she was the one who put the bullet in the chamber (as she is the only one who knows where the box of bullets was; even worse if she didn’t bring them all since she would have had to bring it from home).
That’s why her defense lawyers decided NOT to call him and why, presumably, he didn’t turn over the bullets until AFTER her trial and conviction (with a lighter sentence than if they could have proven her connection to the bullet/loading the gun).
Had he turned the bullets over before her trial (specifically, during the investigation), it would have hurt her and helped Baldwin immensely by directly connecting her to the bullets and the loading of the gun. To this day she claims she did not load the gun, and has no idea how it was loaded. As long as she denied connection to the bullet and loading the gun, it helped her and left open the tiniest doubt that Baldwin or an unknown stranger did so.
It’s a near impossibility it wasn’t her (live bullets aren’t staged on prop tables for actors to load and play with) BUT as long as no one knew where the bullets came from/ended up (which just happened to be hidden away in the possession of a family friend who didn’t reveal their presence until after it couldn’t hurt her) she benefitted and Baldwin was at higher risk. Had they been found or turned over during the investigation, there would have been a much stronger argument that she loaded the gun/left it loaded, Baldwin had no idea at all, and the accident was much more, if not legally entirely, her fault. Remember, her best play was more fault or doubt landing on him during her trial.
Conversely, it coming out afterward was not guaranteed to help Baldwin the way it did. It ultimately did (as the judge went scorched earth on the prosecution) but there is no way Baldwin or his lawyers could have predicted that outcome. So your idea that Baldwin “paid off” someone for this to be revealed/”found out”/”discovered” as a way of guaranteeing his freedom/getting his case tossed out “conveniently” isn’t really a workable one, as there was no way he could have predicted the outcome and, as the judge correctly explains in her dismissal, the withholding of it hurt him the most (there’s a real argument the case against him wouldn’t have ever made it to trial or the charges wouldn’t have been as severe had G-R’s more direct link to the bullets not been suppressed and her likely lies about not being the one who brought the bullets/loaded the gun been revealed). That’s why the judge found the case against Baldwin was undermined beyond repair, but Baldwin couldn’t have counted on that (and it’s unlikely G-R’s family friend, who’d already protected her, would suddenly turn on her and her father for money, making himself a criminal as well).
Wow, thanks for this. It was really helpful.
On one hand, this argument certainly make sense.
But I still think Gutierrez’s team somehow thinks those bullets HELP her.
Otherwise, if Officer Friend held onto the bullets throughout her trial, why hand them over after she is convicted? They can hurt her appeal, for sure, and can’t he get in trouble for withholding evidence against her? So why would he hand them over at all?
So on the other hand, the exclusion of that box of bullets from evidence is also the basis for why, mid-July, Hannah Gutierrez sought a retrial – claiming that since Baldwin’s case was thrown out for mishandling evidence, hers should be (or should be re-tried) as well. (She sought an appeal in May after the trial was decided, so this re-trial is different from that).
So clearly they think the box of bullets helps Gutierrez…which is weird because it is SO fishy that her family friend just happened to have the bullet box.
this prosecutor sounds more and more like Jean Valjean. I actually feel sorry for Baldwin now, this prosecutor’s ambition is going to keep him from ever having a moment’s peace. Hopefully the appeals court will toss it out.
I mean, it WAS a horrible tragedy. And I feel deeply for the victims. But all the evidence shows that is was not Baldwin’s fault. And his life has really been wrecked.
I’ll bet the county’s residents are super glad that the prosecutor’s office is spending time and tax dollars on this.
The prosecutor f up by giving the person most responsible a too good plea deal.
The guy who gave Alec the gun said “cold gun”. He should’ve said “unchecked gun”.
Then I go back and forth between the armor Hannah, and alec. Did she tell them to grab a gun off her table? I don’t believe she did. However, alec was THEE senior member on that production and he has handled guns before. He should’ve checked the gun.
All three should do some jail time.
This would just be a giant waste of taxpayer money. To appeal this to a higher court. For what? I know not all the evidence was heard. But a juror spoke after and said he thought it was a waste of time being there.
Hannah’s conviction should absolutely stand. Her lawyer was aware what Teske was doing and chose not to call him to the stand. Then Teske was in the wind and wouldn’t return LE calls. It all stinks of Thell just trying to help Hannah.
Kari got outmaneuvered by high powered slick NYC lawyers. She can’t turn back time now.
Kari just wants to salvage her reputation and legacy. Unless the family is asking for this. Just leave them alone and in peace to heal.