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    ‘Rust’ Armorer Is Denied New Trial After Dismissal of Alec Baldwin’s Case

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    The armorer’s lawyers failed to convince the judge that the same evidence dispute that led her to toss the actor’s manslaughter charge had deprived their client of a fair trial.A judge in New Mexico declined on Monday to grant a new trial to the armorer in the fatal “Rust” shooting, who had accused the prosecution of suppressing evidence.The armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, is serving an 18-month prison sentence and had asked to be retried on an involuntary manslaughter charge in New Mexico after the same judge dismissed the case against Alec Baldwin during his trial in July. Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer found then that the state had withheld evidence that could have shed light on how live rounds got onto the film set.On the afternoon of Oct. 21, 2021, Mr. Baldwin was positioning the old-fashioned revolver for a tight camera framing when the weapon discharged, killing the movie’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and wounding its director. A jury convicted Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, who loaded the gun that day, of manslaughter in March after prosecutors argued that she was reckless in overseeing guns and ammunitions on the set.Judge Marlowe Sommer ruled on Monday that the suppressed evidence that felled the Baldwin case — a set of ammunition that was delivered to law enforcement on the day of the armorer’s conviction — did not warrant dismissal of Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s trial because her lawyer was aware of and had access to the evidence.The judge wrote that the ammunition “does not qualify, as a matter of law, as material evidence because it was available to defendant in advance of and during trial.”The ruling was a moment of relief for the prosecution after its case against Mr. Baldwin, 66, collapsed under an accusation that state investigators had intentionally withheld the ammunition from them by putting it under a new case number. The accusation led to an extraordinary hearing in which the judge examined the ammunition in the courtroom; the lead special prosecutor, Kari T. Morrissey, called herself as a witness; and the other prosecutor on her team resigned.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Prosecutor Says Manslaughter Case Against Alec Baldwin Should Be Revived

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      The special prosecutor asked a judge in New Mexico to reconsider her decision to toss the charge against the actor during his trial.A prosecutor who oversaw the involuntary manslaughter case against Alec Baldwin has asked a judge in New Mexico to reconsider her dismissal of the charge during the trial.The judge tossed out the case in July after finding that the state had withheld evidence that could have shed light on how live rounds got onto a film set where a cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, was fatally shot. The judge dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning that it could not be refiled, ending the prosecution of Mr. Baldwin.But in court papers filed on Friday, Kari T. Morrissey, the special prosecutor, sought to persuade Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer to change her mind, arguing that the evidence in question — a batch of rounds brought to law enforcement this year — was irrelevant to whether Mr. Baldwin was criminally culpable for pointing the gun on set that day.“Nothing about the details of how the live rounds were introduced to the set is relevant or material to the charges against Mr. Baldwin,” Ms. Morrissey wrote in the court papers, later writing, “there was no cover-up because there was nothing to cover up.”The dramatic dismissal of the case against Mr. Baldwin prompted the movie’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, to ask for a new trial; she was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in March and sentenced to 18 months in prison.It was the third day of Mr. Baldwin’s manslaughter trial at the Santa Fe County District Courthouse when his lawyers sought the dismissal of the case over the state’s failure to provide it with live ammunition that came from a man named Troy Teske, a friend of Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s stepfather, Thell Reed, who is a well-known Hollywood armorer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Key Players in Alec Baldwin’s ‘Rust’ Shooting Manslaughter Trial

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      ‎ The actor Alec Baldwin was filming the movie “Rust” in New Mexico in 2021 when the gun that he was rehearsing with, which was not supposed to contain live ammunition, went off, firing a bullet that killed the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins. The film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who was responsible for weapons and ammunition on the set, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 18 months in prison. Now Mr. Baldwin is going on trial for involuntary manslaughter; he has pleaded not guilty. Opening arguments begin on Wednesday. Here are some key players.The ‘Rust’ ProductionAlec BaldwinRoss D. Franklin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesActor and producerMr. Baldwin, who was playing a grizzled outlaw in “Rust,” has vehemently denied responsibility in the fatal shooting on Oct. 21, 2021, saying that he was told that the old-fashioned revolver he was handed on the set that day was “cold,” meaning that it was not loaded with live ammunition, and adding that it was unthinkable that any live rounds would be on the set. Mr. Baldwin has also said he did not pull the trigger when the gun discharged, but had merely pulled the hammer back and let it go; prosecutors have said that forensic examinations have suggested that he must have pulled the trigger.Hannah Gutierrez-ReedPool photo by Luis Sanchez, via Saturno/EPA, via ShutterstockArmorerAs the armorer, Ms. Gutierrez-Reed was responsible for weapons and ammunition on the “Rust” set; even though there was not supposed to be any live ammunition on the set, she loaded a live round into the revolver that day and failed to catch it when she checked the weapon. She stood trial this year, and a jury convicted her of involuntary manslaughter. Prosecutors argued that she had brought the live rounds onto the set, which she denied. She was sentenced to 18 months in prison — the same maximum sentence that Mr. Baldwin would face if he is convicted. She is appealing the conviction.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Long, Strange Road to Alec Baldwin’s Manslaughter Trial

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      On the afternoon of Oct. 21, 2021, Mary Carmack-Altwies, the district attorney for New Mexico’s First Judicial District, was driving along a lonely stretch of the mountain highway connecting Santa Fe and Taos when her cell service abruptly returned and her phone started pinging — message after message. She pulled over to the side of the road and began scrolling: Alec Baldwin had accidentally shot two people on a movie set in her jurisdiction. Carmack-Altwies had planned to spend the next couple of days alone in the mountains before celebrating her 43rd birthday with her wife, a retired investigator for the state, and their two children. Clearly that was not going to happen.Listen to this article, read by Pete SimonelliThe shooting occurred at 1:46 p.m. that day at the Bonanza Creek Ranch, a family-owned Old West movie set about 20 miles southeast of Santa Fe that had been rented out by “Rust,” an independent film that Baldwin was both starring in and producing. The bullet he inadvertently fired passed through the upper body of the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and lodged near the spine of Joel Souza, the director. Souza was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Santa Fe; Hutchins was airlifted to a trauma center in Albuquerque and died a short time later.Carmack-Altwies was nearing the end of her first year in office. She had been an assistant district attorney specializing in violent crimes when her boss made a bid for Congress. She ran to succeed him — her first foray into electoral politics — and won easily, inheriting a jurisdiction that covers three counties: Los Alamos, Rio Arriba and Santa Fe. She’s a Democrat in a Democratic district, though the label connotes something very different in New Mexico, a rural hunting state whose voters tend to place a high value on the Second Amendment, than it does in, say, New York or California. Carmack-Altwies turned around and went back to her office in Santa Fe, where she spent most of the night on the phone with the local police, trying to make sure that the movie set, now a potential crime scene, was properly secured. In the days that followed, reporters from all over the world descended on Santa Fe. Carmack-Altwies held her first news conference about the incident six days later outside the Sheriff’s Department. She was asked if she intended to prosecute anyone. “I do not make rash decisions, and I do not rush to judgment,” she said. “All options are on the table at this point.”Bonanza Creek Ranch, the movie set where Alec Baldwin fatally shot the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins with a prop gun in October 2021, leading to his indictment on charges of involuntary manslaughter.Roberto E. Rosales/Albuquerque Journal, via ZUMA/AlamyWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judge to Rule Next Week on Whether to Dismiss Alec Baldwin Case

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      During a heated hearing, Mr. Baldwin’s lawyers claimed prosecutors had improperly presented evidence to the grand jury considering the fatal shooting on the set of “Rust.”A judge in New Mexico will rule next week on whether to dismiss the involuntary manslaughter indictment against Alec Baldwin in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the “Rust” film set, after she closely questioned the lead prosecutor on Friday about her handling of grand jury proceedings.Lawyers for Mr. Baldwin — who was rehearsing with an old-fashioned revolver on the set in 2021 when it fired a live bullet, killing the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins — had lodged numerous objections to how the case has been handled, calling the prosecution “an abuse of an innocent person whose rights have been trampled to the extreme.”The defense claimed at a hearing on Friday that the prosecution had not sufficiently shown the jurors evidence that could have supported Mr. Baldwin’s case. That included presenting witnesses who could have bolstered the defense’s contention that Mr. Baldwin had no reason to think that the gun was loaded with live ammunition and that actors are not responsible for gun safety on film sets.“The court can have no comfort in this indictment; it can have no comfort in the way it was procured,” a lawyer representing Mr. Baldwin, Alex Spiro, argued at the hearing, which took place virtually. “It cannot possibly believe it was fair and impartial.”Mr. Baldwin’s lawyers have assigned blame to the movie’s weapons specialist, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in a trial this year and sentenced to 18 months in prison, and to the movie’s first assistant director, Dave Halls, who has acknowledged that he failed to properly inspect the gun that day and took a plea deal.Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer of the First Judicial District Courthouse in Santa Fe, N.M., questioned the lead prosecutor in the case, Kari T. Morrissey, on the defense’s complaints about how she had presented the case to the grand jury. The judge pressed Ms. Morrissey on the defense’s claim that she had “steered grand jurors away” from their proposed witnesses.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Prosecutor Behind ‘Rust’ Charges Steps Aside, Appointing Replacements

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      The involuntary manslaughter case against Alec Baldwin has suffered setbacks, and now the district attorney has withdrawn from the case and named two special prosecutors.The district attorney who brought involuntary manslaughter charges against Alec Baldwin in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the “Rust” film set in New Mexico is stepping away from the case, her office announced Wednesday, as she named two new special prosecutors to handle the case.The district attorney of Santa Fe County, Mary Carmack-Altwies, had been the face of the prosecution since the beginning. But in recent weeks the case has faced a couple of setbacks: Prosecutors downgraded the charges Mr. Baldwin faces after his lawyers noted that the law he was initially charged under was not passed until after the fatal shooting, and the special prosecutor who was originally named to help with the case, Andrea Reeb, decided to step down after her appointment was challenged in court.The appointment of Ms. Reeb was initially challenged by lawyers for Mr. Baldwin, who argued that it violated the New Mexico Constitution for her to serve as a special prosecutor and a New Mexico legislator at the same time. (She was also an elected member of the state’s House of Representatives.)A lawyer for Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the original armorer on the film “Rust,” who was also charged with involuntary manslaughter in the fatal Oct. 21, 2021, shooting of the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, then raised another issue.The lawyer, Jason Bowles, argued that if Ms. Carmack-Altwies — who had said she needed help prosecuting such a high-profile case — wanted to appoint a new special prosecutor, the law required her to recuse herself from the case entirely. The judge hearing the case agreed, and Ms. Carmack-Altwies was left with the choice to either hire legal help and stay on the case or step back from it and let a new special prosecutor act.She chose to step back, announcing on Wednesday that she would be appointing two New Mexico lawyers, Kari Morrissey and Jason Lewis, as special prosecutors.“My responsibility to the people of the First Judicial District is greater than any one case, which is why I have chosen to appoint a special prosecutor in the ‘Rust’ case,” Ms. Carmack-Altwies said in a statement. “Kari Morrissey and Jason Lewis will unflinchingly pursue justice in the death of Halyna Hutchins.”Now, the case will move forward without either of the prosecutors who made the decision to charge Mr. Baldwin and Ms. Gutierrez-Reed with involuntary manslaughter, and who reached a plea deal with Dave Halls, the movie’s first assistant director, who had oversight of safety on set. More