Alec Baldwin will not have his manslaughter charge dropped for the shooting death of Halyna Hutchins in 2021 on the set of the Western movie “Rust.”
Friday, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer agreed with the special prosecutors in New Mexico and turned down Baldwin’s lawyers’ request to throw out the grand jury charge from January.
The decision comes a week after Sommer heard from Alex Spiro, Baldwin’s lawyer, and Kari Morrissey, the special prosecutor, at a meeting on May 17.
Baldwin’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the indictment in March. In it, they said that state officials were “unfairly stacking the deck” against the “30 Rock” actor and “abusing the system and an innocent person whose rights have been trampled to the extreme.”
“The grand jury did not receive the favorable or exculpatory testimony and documents that the state had an obligation to present,” it said. “Nor was the grand jury told it had a right to review and the obligation to request this information.”
Late in January, Baldwin said he was not guilty of killing by accident. The hearing for the case was set to start on July 10.
Heather Gutierrez-Reed, an armorer on “Rust,” was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in March for the death of Hutchins, a 42-year-old cameraman. Gutierrez-Reed was later given the maximum sentence for her crime, 18 months in jail. Her lawyers have promised to appeal the decision.
New Mexico authorities said Baldwin was “bullish” on the set of “Rust.”
Baldwin asked for the case to be dropped, and last month, the special prosecutors responded. State prosecutors Kari Morrissey and Jason Lewis wrote in the 316-page record that Baldwin behaved “bullishly on set” and lied to blame other people.
officials said in their 316-page document that Baldwin was a demanding actor and producer of the project who didn’t follow safety rules, didn’t listen to his director, and lied about what happened during the shoot.
“Every time Mr. Baldwin spoke, a different version of events emerged from his mouth and his later statements contradicted his previous statements,” prosecutors said.
Also, Baldwin’s defense team is trying “to ensure that the case is not heard on its merits, and if it is heard on its merits, to discredit the prosecution, investigation, and witnesses in the media so that a conviction becomes unlikely for reasons that have nothing to do with Mr. Baldwin’s criminal culpability.”
In their statement, Morrissey and Lewis said, “Mr. Baldwin was in charge” of the project as the main actor and director. They also said, “Mr. Baldwin was frequently yelling and swearing at himself, at crew members, or at no one and for no reason.”
If you watch Mr. Baldwin on the set of Rust, you will see a man who has no control over his feelings and doesn’t care about how his behavior affects those around him, they wrote. Others who were there said that this behavior was a major cause of safety problems on set.
Prosecutors say that 26-year-old armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed’s “negligence and inexperience” and Baldwin’s “complete lack of concern for the safety of those around him” on set both played a part in Hutchins’ death.
Baldwin was pointing a.45 caliber single-action army revolver at Hutchins on Oct. 21, 2021, during practice on the movie set near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Hutchins was killed and director Joel Souza was hurt when the gun went off. Baldwin insisted that he had never fired the gun.
