The prosecutor in the Rust case has asked the judge to reconsider her decision to dismiss the manslaughter charge against actor Alec Baldwin, suggesting the government may seek to send the case back to appeal.
Carrie Morrissey, the special prosecutor appointed to handle the Rust cases, alleged that the defense successfully “misled” Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer about the significance of the evidence that was withheld.
Morrissey urged the judge to reconsider, and to ask the defense more questions about how he learned of the evidence.
Baldwin was on trial in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for the accidental shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. Marlowe Sommer ended the proceedings with a scathing verdict on July 12, accusing the prosecutor of withholding bullets that had been turned over to the sheriff’s department months earlier.
In a dramatic moment in court, the judge put on rubber gloves and opened the evidence envelope, revealing that the bullets appeared to match the live rounds found in the Rust kit.
“If this conduct does not rise to the level of bad faith, it certainly approaches bad faith to the point of showing signs of burning,” the judge said.
The judge dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled.
In the lawsuit, Morrissey alleged that Baldwin's nine-member defense team took advantage of the appointed prosecutors by filing the motion to dismiss mid-trial.
“The fact that this motion was raised at trial was a tactical decision by the defense to take advantage of the state’s limited resources,” she wrote, arguing that the defense “was waiting to move to dismiss the case at trial when it had a tactical advantage.”
She argued that the defense knew about the bullets long before they were dramatically revealed in court, likely through Rust's defense attorney, Hannah Gutierrez Reed. Thus, Morrissey argued, Baldwin's defense was not truly surprised or stymied by the state's failure to turn over evidence.
Morrissey asked that the defense be forced to disclose “all information regarding when and how” it learned about the tours, “so that a complete record can be prepared for possible review by a higher court.”
Morrissey asserted that she believed the bullets were not relevant to Baldwin's defense and were not exculpatory, and therefore there was no obligation to disclose them.
