BALDWIN WALKS! Judge Dismisses Shooting Death Case Against Actor

In a surprise move late Friday afternoon, the judge presiding over the Alec Baldwin manslaughter trial dismissed the charges against the actor.

Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer dismissed the charges with prejudice, meaning Baldwin cannot be tried again for the killing of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the movie Rust back in 2021. “There is no way for the court to right this wrong,” Judge Sommer said in dismissing the charges.

Baldwin had been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the shooting of Hutchins, a charge the movie’s armorer, Hanna Guiterrez-Reed, was found guilty of back in March and sentenced to 18 months in prison. Hutchins was killed in October 2021 when Baldwin pointed a “prop gun” at Hutchins and pulled the trigger. The shot also injured the film’s director, Joel Souza.

According to numerous reports, Baldwin sobbed openly upon the judge’s surprise pronouncement.

The dismissal came after things went south for prosecutors during the proceedings on Friday. Long story short, the judge learned that the prosecution had failed to disclose some ammunition as evidence, which it was required to do.

“They buried it,” Luke Nikas, Baldwin’s lawyer said in court. “They put it under a different case with a different number.”

Earlier in the trial, prosecutors had painted Baldwin as a reckless person with little care for any of the tenants of safe gun handling.

“The defendant takes [the gun] out quickly the first time pointed—and you will hear witness testimony who will tell you the first time he does it his finger is on or around the trigger,” Special Prosecutor Erlinda Johnson told the jury. “He does it again. Takes it out very fast, points it, and once again you will hear testimony that his finger was on or around the trigger. And the evidence will

In the end, it was instead the prosecution’s reckless managing of evidence that resulted in dismissal of the case. Had Baldwin been convicted of the charge, he could have faced up to 18 months in prison, the same sentence handed to Guiterrez-Reed.

While criminal charges related to the matter cannot be brought back against the actor, there remains a tangle of civil suits in which the actor, his production company and insurance companies are still litigating.