It's very, very rare when a judge dismisses a homicide case following a defendant's motion to dismiss as in this case. I found it interesting that the Judge excoriated the prosecutor and found that the State had hidden evidence from Alec Baldwin's lawyers that would have had a material impact on the trial results. She punished the State for hiding the evidence and dismissed the charges against the actor with prejudice, meaning the State can't refile them again. I have to give a lot of credit to that Judge for having the temperament to do the right thing, in my opinion.

I never understood why real bullets would be anywhere near a prop gun. Who would bring those to the set? How could Baldwin have even suspected that real bullets could possibly be in the gun? I could understand the armorer being charged but what a weird tragic accident that is.

quote:

Originally posted by promoking:
It's very, very rare when a judge dismisses a homicide case following a defendant's motion to dismiss as in this case. I found it interesting that the Judge excoriated the prosecutor and found that the State had hidden evidence from Alec Baldwin's lawyers that would have had a material impact on the trial results. She punished the State for hiding the evidence and dismissed the charges against the actor with prejudice, meaning the State can't refile them again. I have to give a lot of credit to that Judge for having the temperament to do the right thing, in my opinion.

I never felt like there was a provable case against Baldwin for manslaughter, no matter how stupid his individual actions might have been. He didn't know the gun was loaded.

Now as one of the producers of Rust, he does bear part of the production's responsibilities. They were making this film on the cheap with an inexperienced and in some cases disgruntled crew. Someone lost control of the safety of the set and the Armorer is the one who took most of the blame, since the weapons were her job.

I do believe I read somewhere that a monetary settlement was already reached with the decease's family, so I don't know if there are any more civil cases to pursue against the production company or other individuals. They are planning to release this film at some point.

So Baldwin will go down as innocent of an unfortunate accident, but I hope he won't be doing any victory laps, because it was a foreseeable accident that he himself could have avoided. He will never admit to that on his reality TV show of course.

"The bullets, Mr Baldwin's lawyer said, could be related to Ms Hutchins' death, but were filed in a different case with a different number.

Prosecutors argued the ammunition was not connected to the case and did not match bullets found on the Rust set.

The judge ruled, however, that they should have been shared with Mr Baldwin's defense team regardless."

I'm still confused. If the box of bullets aren't from the movie set and are part of a different investigation....why does the prosecution have to inform the defense?

Obviously I am missing something.

Ok found some court video that had the ability to put things in context. A dying art in news reporting these days.