‘Rust’ movie set shooting trial: Why the involuntary manslaughter case against actor Alec Baldwin was dismissed

Two days after Alec Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter trial began and nearly three years after the fatal “Rust” movie set shooting that led to the charge against him, a New Mexico judge said eight words that left the actor visibly emotional – and marked the trial’s end.

Two days after Alec Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter trial began and nearly three years after the fatal “Rust” movie set shooting that led to the charge against him, a New Mexico judge said eight words that left the actor visibly emotional – and marked the trial’s end. “Your motion to dismiss with prejudice is granted,” Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer told Baldwin and his legal team in court on Friday afternoon, prompting an already shaking Baldwin to remove his glasses and sob into his hand before embracing his wife, Hilaria. The ruling concluded nearly three years of back-and-forth legal arguments and turnover in prosecutors leading up to the trial against Baldwin, who faced up to 18 months in prison and a $5,000 fine related to the October 2021 fatal shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the Western film, “Rust.” At the time of the shooting on October 21, 2021, Baldwin was practicing a “cross draw” – pulling a gun from a holster on the side of his body opposite from his draw hand – with a prop gun at a church on the film’s New Mexico set when it fired a live round, killing Hutchins and injuring “Rust” director Joel Souza. On Thursday, Baldwin’s defense team filed a motion to dismiss the case stating that the prosecutors concealed evidence “potentially pointing to an external source of the live ammunition (prop supplier Seth Kenney) because the evidence would be favorable to Baldwin,” court documents show. On Friday, following a chaotic hearing that involved one special prosecutor taking the stand as a witness and another special prosecutor – Erlinda Johnson – resigning from the prosecution team that day, Marlowe Sommer sided with the defense as a result of the evidence issue first brought to light Thursday, and granted the motion to dismiss with prejudice, meaning that the case cannot be brought again.