Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer remained serious until the end. By 5pm on Friday she was also tired and quite angry. Enough was enough.
Without fanfare or pomp, with a whisper rather than a bang, he quickly announced that the manslaughter case against Alec Baldwin had been dismissed because the prosecution had suppressed evidence, leaving no prospect of a fair trial.
He added the phrase “with prejudice,” meaning the actor cannot be tried again on these charges.
“There is no way the court can right this wrong,” he said in a flat, emotionless voice as the news rippled through the courtroom.
Gasps were heard from both the public and the press as the trial, which was scheduled to last at least ten days, abruptly ended after just three.
At the defense table, the 66-year-old actor took off his glasses, put a hand over his eyes and began to cry, a small tremor of sobs that shook his shoulders.
Alec Baldwin is hugged by his wife Hilaria in court as the judge announces that the manslaughter case against him has been dismissed due to the prosecution’s suppression of evidence.
Baldwin and his wife kiss and hug as the actor was able to walk out of court a free man.
Lead attorney Luke Nikas placed a comforting hand on his arm and then the two men hugged. Celebrity attorney and second-in-command Alex Spiro was next to give him another big hug, looking exultant after having secured this sensational victory for his client.
Just behind them, Baldwin’s wife, Hilaria, had been taking nervous gulps of air throughout the judge’s sentencing before crying into a tissue at its conclusion. She stepped forward to hug her husband and the couple embraced, for a few moments oblivious to the clamor around them. At one point, Baldwin had to brace his hands on the bar in the courtroom to steady himself.
The case, which had been hanging over his head for almost three years, was suddenly and dramatically closed. If found guilty, he faced up to 18 months in prison. Instead, he walked out of court a free man.
It was a plot twist no one saw coming, a real-life crime drama that most amateur detectives would dismiss as too far-fetched.
In the end, Baldwin’s trial did not turn on the crucial questions of the case: Did he pull the trigger on his gun? Should he have checked to see if his weapon was properly loaded with blanks? Was he guilty of criminal negligence?
Now we will never know what the jury would have thought about these much-debated issues.
In the end, the case was dismissed simply because the prosecutor made a fatal mistake; how exactly he did it, we will never know.
Earlier that morning, before court began its session, Chief Prosecutor Kari Morrissey seemed to know it was going to be a long day.
There were few people around as she laid out papers on her courtroom desk and conferred with a young member of her team sitting just in front of the press benches.
“We have a glass of scotch in the future,” he told her, which seemed to suggest that he believed triumph was within his grasp. Within hours, however, she would be drinking on the rocks, too.
In retrospect, it seems clear that something wild was in the air when proceedings began on Friday.
There was never much sympathy between the prosecution and defense teams in this case, but things were reaching a new level of bitter hostility.
The atmosphere became increasingly tense, tempers flared and exchanges became heated. No wonder.
Shortly before 8 p.m. the day before, the defense team had filed another motion to dismiss the case. It was the sixth time they had done so since Baldwin was indicted in January (for the second time), and Judge Sommer had rejected all the others. This time, however, was different. Suddenly we were on the warpath.
In the absence of the jury, the defense presented its claim that the prosecution had withheld evidence about a batch of ammunition that had been turned over to authorities several months ago by a witness who claimed it was connected to the shooting. Morrissey, representing the prosecution, said the evidence was not relevant and had not been withheld — he just did not believe it was important.
“You don’t get to decide that,” the defence countered, citing one of the key principles of US law – as it is in British law – that the prosecution has a duty to turn over all evidence, regardless of whether it is prejudicial to its case or may assist the defence.
Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, 42, who was accidentally shot by Baldwin on the set of her film Rust
Baldwin was rehearsing a scene when the gun he was holding went off, hitting Ms Hutchins. He has insisted he did not pull the trigger and did not know why it contained live ammunition.
The judge ordered the contested evidence to be produced and, in a bizarre turn of events, she put on a pair of blue rubber gloves and examined them herself, picking out the bullets as if she were rummaging through a basket of strawberries looking for rotten fruit. No one in the courtroom could believe what they were seeing.
Things got even stranger when, in an attempt to salvage her crumbling case — and her reputation as one of New Mexico’s top attorneys — Morrissey put herself on the witness stand.
“Why are you doing this?” asked the bewildered judge, whose patience was wearing thin. The response was to explain why the evidence was irrelevant.
This desperate development was an indication of how disastrous Morrissey’s strategy had become, particularly since once on the stand, he had to admit that his co-prosecutor Erlinda Ocampo Johnson had resigned from the case earlier that day. “I left because I learned of this evidence when the public learned of it,” Johnson later said. “My job is not to get a conviction, it’s to present evidence to a jury.”
Morrissey stood alone, and her fall from grace was crushing. Throughout this trial, I had always admired her intelligence, her toughness, her formidable courtroom presence. In the months of litigation leading up to last week’s events, Baldwin’s elite team of high-profile New York lawyers had forcefully portrayed her as a kind of bitter girl from Hicksville, a small-town lawyer who just wanted celebrity at any price, with no regard for the administration of justice.
A woman who was said to have a particular hatred for Baldwin, a polarizing figure in the United States.
When questioning Morrissey on Friday, Spiro, representing the defense, took the opportunity to ask the prosecutor whether she was prosecuting out of a sense of spite rather than a sense of justice.
“You don’t like Mr. Baldwin, do you?” he said, almost sneering. Morrissey replied that he “appreciated” Baldwin’s politics, as well as “the performance he did on Saturday Night Live.”
How galling it is to be damned with such faint praise, almost as if Morrissey were half-heartedly trying to impress a Tinder date with his liberalism.
Spiro pressed the case, asking if he remembered calling his client a “c******r” and an “arrogant faggot” when speaking privately to witnesses. “I don’t recall saying that,” he replied.
It wasn’t exactly a sweeping denial, but it also didn’t end my growing suspicions that perhaps the defense team had been right about her all along.
Baldwin watched all this from his seat in the courtroom, perhaps not daring to dream that his nightmare might soon be over, not caring at all whether Morrissey liked his Donald Trump impersonations or not.
The irony is that it’s not clear whether not revealing the bullets would have made any difference in establishing Baldwin’s guilt or innocence, because no one believed he had anything to do with bringing real bullets onto the set. It was never an issue.
Baldwin was rehearsing a scene when the gun he was holding went off. He has insisted he did not pull the trigger and did not know why it contained live ammunition. In a B-movie subplot, Baldwin’s lawyers claimed that a man named Troy Teske, a close friend of convicted gunsmith Hannah Gutierrez-Reed’s father, was responsible for delivering to authorities a box of ammunition that he believed was connected to the shooting.
Could these mysterious bullets have helped Gutierrez-Reed’s case? They certainly helped Baldwin’s, in ways he never dared hope.
Because if it is discovered that the prosecution has suppressed evidence, whether by mistake or on purpose, it’s game over.
Alec and Hilaria Baldwin left the courtroom without speaking to reporters, but no one comes away from this case as a hero. Pictured: The couple leaving First District Court on Thursday
There is already speculation that Gutierrez-Reed, who was also prosecuted by Morrissey and sentenced to 18 months for her role in the death of Halyna Hutchins, could soon walk free as well.
“The judge found there was willful misconduct. We will be asking for Hannah’s case to be dismissed,” said her attorney Jason Bowles.
When it was all over, Alec and Hilaria Baldwin walked out of the courtroom without speaking to reporters. After the strain and stress they’ve endured over the past three years, I’m happy for them, but no one comes out of this case a hero. And nothing changes the fact that a young woman died in entirely avoidable circumstances.
Despite Friday’s remarkable victory, it likely won’t be the last time Baldwin sees the inside of a courtroom over the tragic accident.
“We respect the court’s decision,” said Brian Parish, who represents Halyna Hutchins’ widower and her 9-year-old son and is working on a civil case on their behalf.
“We look forward to presenting all the evidence to a jury and holding Mr. Baldwin accountable for his actions in the senseless death of Halyna Hutchins,” he said.
It’s not over until it’s over. And it’s not over yet.
Additional reporting by Barbara McMahon
