Breaking: Alec Baldwin in Tears After Judge Rules in 'Rust' Case

Actor Alec Baldwin’s manslaughter trial was dismissed on Friday.

The dismissal was based on arguments from the defense that the prosecution failed to share evidence about ammunition in its possession.

According to CNN, the case was dismissed with prejudice, meaning it cannot be brought to trial again.

In October 2021, on the set of his film “Rust,” Baldwin fired the gun that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza. He had been charged with involuntary manslaughter. Baldwin has publicly stated that he never pulled the trigger on the gun.

Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the film’s armorer, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for a live round being in a gun that should not have contained real ammunition.

“The sanction of dismissal is the only warranted remedy” in the case, First Judicial District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer said, according to NBC.

“There is no way for the court to right this wrong,” Sommer added, according to The New York Times.

The dismissal occurred after an envelope containing the ammunition was brought into court. Sommer wore latex gloves, opened the envelope, and examined the ammunition.

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

Baldwin buried his face in his hands and sobbed as the ruling was made, according to NBC. He also hugged his wife, Hilaria, as reported by the Daily Mail.

Baldwin’s lawyers claimed that the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office had live rounds in its possession but did not record them as evidence or inform Baldwin’s legal team.

Marissa Poppell, a crime scene technician from the sheriff’s office, initially stated in court that the evidence was not hidden and questioned the claim that the ammunition matched the type that killed Hutchins.

The Times reported that after the ammunition was delivered to the court, “it became clear some resembled the ammunition collected on the set.”

Special prosecutor Kari Morrissey stated that she had never seen anything about the rounds until they appeared in court.

“I never saw them until today,” she said.

The Colt .45 rounds in question were delivered to the sheriff’s office in March by a friend of Thell Reed, the stepfather of Gutierrez-Reed, on the day she was convicted.

NBC reported that Morrissey had previously argued that the bullets did not match the ones in the gun that fired the fatal shot and called the defense’s claims a “wild goose chase that has no evidentiary value whatsoever.”