No Crime, No Gun: Alec Baldwin Wants ‘Rust’ Involuntary Manslaughter Charges Tossed Before Trial Starts
As Alec Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter trial looms, the Rust star-producer is again attempting to get a judge to dismiss the charges stemming from the fatal 2021 shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the New Mexico set of the indie film.
“Because the State does not even allege that Baldwin was aware of any level of risk (let alone a substantial risk) that the gun was loaded with live ammunition, he is innocent as a matter of law,” says one of two filings that Baldwin’s defense team of NYC-based Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan lawyers and Albuquerque firm LeBlanc Law put in the Santa Fe County courts this week.
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“The State has not alleged facts that constitute a crime,” Baldwin’s attorneys declare in their 22-page motion to dismiss the indictment for failure to allege a criminal crime (read it here). “Even taking every allegation that the State has presented as true solely for the purposes of this motion, defendant Alec Baldwin could not have been aware of a substantial risk that his alleged actions could cause the death of Halyna Hutchins because he had no reason to believe that the firearm contained live ammunition.”
A footnote in the filing may offer a strong hint of where the defense will lay their emphasis in the upcoming hearing and trial.
“The State may assert that Baldwin acted with criminal negligence because he did not inspect the firearm after the designated safety professionals had already done so,” the lack of a crime motion states. “Putting aside the fact that the State already took the opposite position at Gutierrez-Reed’s trial and that, regardless, this argument doesn’t change the absence of Baldwin’s subjective awareness of a substantial risk to human life on the set, the State’s own adm
Having always maintained his innocence and insisting that he never pulled the trigger on the Colt .45 that killed Hutchins and wounded Rust director Joel Souza, Baldwin will see his dismissal move assessed in a May 17 virtual hearing, the courts announced today. The session before Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer comes less than two months before the trial of the recharged Baldwin is set to start on July 9 in Santa Fe.
Like currently incarcerated Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, Baldwin could be sentenced to 18 months behind bars and thousands in fines if found guilty. Gutierrez-Reed was successfully convicted of involuntary manslaughter by a Land of Enchantment jury in just a few hours on March 6. Already taken into custody after the verdit came down, the 27-year-old Gutierrez-Reed was sentenced on April 14
Having tried time and time again to get this case thrown out since their client had charges re-filed against him back in January, Baldwin’s lawyers have brought back an old complaint in their May 6 Destruction of Evidence filing (read it here) from the first time the actor was charged in early 2023 – the primary evidence is in pieces.
The government took the most critical evidence in this case-the firearm-and destroyed it by repeatedly and pointlessly striking it with a mallet. Government agents knew that the firearm would not survive their clumsy “tests” intact. They said so explicitly in emails. But at the insistence of prosecutors eager to prove a celebrity’s guilt, they nevertheless blundered ahead without preserving the original state of the firearm through photographs, video, or other means; without informing Baldwin or his counsel they were conducting destructive testing; and without any realistic prospect that bludgeoning the gun would reveal whether Baldwin had pulled the trigger on the day of the accident.
Under time-honored principles of due process, the charges must be dismissed. The law is clear: the government may not knowingly deprive the defense of potentially useful evidence by destroying it. Indeed, even where the government acts with mere negligence-let alone the intentional ineptitude on display here-the destruction of apparently exculpatory evidence violates due process. It is difficult to find a reported decision with a more egregious constellation of facts: premeditated destruction of the key evidence by government agents for no justifiable reason, at the insistence of prosecutors determined to prove Baldwin’s guilt, and without even the most rudimentary efforts to document the original condition of that evidence.
Prosecutors have asserted that the gun was not destroyed in FBI testing and claims to the contrary are posturing by the defense.
A month ago, the special prosecutors said that Baldwin and his lawyers have engaged in relentless “misleading statements” and “false” claims in the case. Citing material supposedly leaked to the media, a plea deal gone South, and a strong arming of documentary subjects, the prosectors keep coming back what they call Baldwin’s “complete lack of concern for the safety of those around him” on the deeply troubled Rust set.
Recharged with involuntary manslaughter over four months ago and having entered a not guilty plea not long afterward, Baldwin is also up against around half a dozen civil cases in California and New Mexico courts related to Rust and the horrible shooting .
As all the filings and hearings have gone on, Rust was resurrected in early 2023 to see filming completed in Montana with Baldwin and Souza returning as star/producer and director respectively. Finished for months, Rust has not been picked up by any buyers so far.
The State v. Alexander Rae Baldwin trial is expected to last about two weeks, if it goes ahead this summer at all.
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