We’ve been on tenterhooks for weeks waiting for a Friday afternoon news dump in re: Bennifer, but this past Friday the news we got came from another direction and was shocking: the case against Alec Baldwin in the 2021 on-set death of Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was dismissed with prejudice, which means not only is this particular trial over, but Baldwin cannot be recharged in criminal court for Ms. Hutchins’ death.
It comes down to a Brady violation, which means the prosecution withheld potentially exculpatory evidence from the defense. The evidence in question was a box of live ammunition of the same type used on set the day Halyna Hutchins was tragically killed. It started on Thursday when Baldwin’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss, and then Friday morning when Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer sent the jury home while the lawyers argued the motion to dismiss. That ended with Judge Sommer dismissing the trial with prejudice, which she outlines here:
I’ve seen a lot of people saying Baldwin got off on a “technicality”, but a Brady violation isn’t a mere technicality. It is significant prosecutorial misconduct, and in this case, Judge Sommer seems to have dismissed with prejudice—ending any hope the state had of retrying Baldwin—specifically to punish the prosecution. They didn’t just, like, lose a box of bullets and not admit it, they deliberately misfiled the evidence in question under a completely different case number specifically to keep that evidence from showing up in the Rust evidence logs so that they wouldn’t have to hand it over in discovery. Out of one side of her mouth, special prosecutor Kari Morrissey said, This isn’t important anyway, and out of the other she said, Do not let the defense see this under ANY circumstances (some real In the Name of the Father sh-t).
And because of the severity of that, it doesn’t even matter if the box of bullets is or is not relevant. Just the act of hiding the evidence wrecks the whole case, and while Baldwin (among others affiliated with the Rust production) still has numerous civil lawsuits to face, the criminal aspect of the case is over. On top of that, it is almost certain that armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed’s attorneys will be seeking to have her own involuntary manslaughter conviction from earlier this year overturned (she is currently incarcerated).
We also still do not have an answer to the single most important question in this case: who brought live ammunition to set? There are never supposed to be live rounds on any set, yet somehow, they were found in the gun Baldwin was using as a prop, as well as in other guns on set and in Baldwin’s wardrobe elements. That set was littered with live rounds, they had to come from somewhere, yet in nearly three years, no one has answered that question.
It came up during Hannah Gutierrez-Reed’s trial, and it kind of seems like live and dummy ammunition got mixed up between this production and the production of 1883 in neighboring Texas, where actors on that series were undergoing live ammunition exercises on one of Taylor Sheridan’s ranches, as both used the same supplier, a man named Seth Kenney. Gutierrez-Reed’s defense said she got the ammo from Kenney, and the prosecutors argued she “unwittingly” brought live rounds onto the Rust set, but never clarified where she got it, if not Kenney. At least not in court, there is apparently more information about the live ammo that hasn’t been made public, which is super weird because again, this whole tragedy hinges on how that ammo got on set. As Benoit Blanc once said, it’s a case with a hole in the middle.
There are still the civil lawsuits to be settled, but there is a chance that, in the criminal record at least, no one will be held accountable for Ms. Hutchins’ entirely preventable death. For those seeking justice for Halyna Hutchins this is certainly unsatisfying. In the hoopla surrounding Baldwin, Halyna has been sidelined in her own death, as often happens to the victims of popularized true crime stories. Let us not forget that Halyna was a wife and mother, she left behind a family and a community devastated by her loss, and she was an artist whose career was taking off, whose work stands as a testament to her talent, ability, and drive, but whose legacy is also too brief for what should have been a long and bright career. There is only one victim in this case, and her name is Halyna Hutchins.
