Despite his legal team’s best efforts, it appears actor and producer Alec Baldwin will stand trial next month in connection with the 2021 death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
State District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer issued an order Friday denying Baldwin’s motion asking the court to dismiss an involuntary manslaughter charge against him on the basis of the state’s destruction of evidence.
The motion was the last pending motion of several Baldwin’s camp had filed seeking to dispose of the case against Baldwin before it goes to trial next month.
Hutchins died after being struck by a bullet which came from a revolver Baldwin was holding during a walk-through of a scene in his movie Rust, which was filming outside Santa Fe at the time.
Baldwin’s legal team had argued at a hearing last week the case should be thrown out because the state had allowed the FBI to destroy the gun during testing to see if it could have fired without Baldwin having pulled the trigger, which is what Baldwin has said happened.
The state’s experts determined the gun was in normal working order and wouldn’t have fired without the trigger being pulled, except under a narrow set of circumstances including being dropped while the hammer was resting on the primer of a live round — something the manufacturer warns against with that particular gun, an Italian replica of a Colt .45.
Baldwin’s team argued the state’s destruction of the evidence — which is thought to have occurred while it was being struck by a mallet during an “accidental discharge” test performed by the FBI — made it impossible for the defense to conduct its own testing to see if that is true.
Sommer wrote in her order that Baldwin’s defense team failed to satisfy requirements that would have justified dismissing the charge, including a requirement that he demonstrate the evidence that was destroyed “had exculpatory value that was apparent before the evidence was destroyed.”
“Rather,” she wrote in her order Friday, “a significant amount of evidence indicates that the unaltered firearm did not possess apparent exculpatory value.”
Sommer points to a statement Baldwin made to a New Mexico Occupational Health and Safety Bureau officer in December 2021 in which he said “the problem with the gun is that there was a live bullet in there. … The problem didn’t have to do with the gun. It had to do with the bullet.”
The judge noted evidence presented at previous hearings included video of Baldwin “unremarkably operating and firing the firearm” prior to the the Oct. 21, 2021, incident.
Additionally Sommer found Baldwin had presented no evidence “beyond speculation and conjecture” that additional testing might have shown the gun was capable of firing without the trigger being pulled, and had not shown “bad faith” on the part of the state in authorizing the testing that led to the gun being damaged.
“In other words, the evidence before the Court does not demonstrate that the State or its agents knew that the unaltered firearm possessed exculpatory value at the time of the accidental discharge testing, and nonetheless destroyed it, thereby indicating that the evidence may have exonerated the Defendant,” she wrote.
However, the judge wrote: “Given the Court’s above assessment of materiality and prejudice, the Court concludes that the State must fully disclose the destructive nature of the firearm testing, the resulting loss, and its relevance and import to the jury. ... In addition, Defendant remains entitled to cross-examination of the State’s witnesses to further accomplish this remedy.”
Jury selection in Baldwin’s case is slated to begin July 9. Sommer has scheduled a pretrial motion hearing for July 8, during which she’s slated to consider a plethora of motions filed by the parties in recent days seeking to refine the sources and types of evidence they will be allowed to introduce at trial.
