Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer was businesslike to the very end. By 5pm on Friday she was also weary and rather cross. Enough was enough.
Without fanfare or pomp, with a whisper not a bang, she briskly announced that the involuntary manslaughter case against Alec Baldwin was dismissed because the prosecution had suppressed evidence, leaving no prospect of a fair trial.
She added the phrase ‘with prejudice,’ meaning that the actor cannot ever be tried again on these charges.
‘There is no way for the court to right this wrong,’ she said in a flat, emotionless voice, as the news rippled around the courtroom like a shockwave.
There were gasps from both the public and press benches as the trial – which had been scheduled to last for at least ten days – was suddenly over after barely three.
At the defence table, the 66-year-old actor took off his spectacles, laid one hand across his eyes and began to cry, a mini-quake of shoulder shaking sobs.
Alec Baldwin is embraced by his wife Hilaria in court, as the judge announced that the involuntary manslaughter case against him was dismissed because of the suppression of evidence by the prosecution
Baldwin and his wife kiss and cling on to each other, as the actor was able to leave court a free man
Lead lawyer Luke Nikas put a comforting hand on his arm, then the two men hugged. Celebrity lawyer and second-in-command Alex Spiro was next for another beefy man-hug, looking jubilant after securing this sensational victory for his client.
Just behind them, Baldwin’s wife Hilaria had been taking nervous gulps of air during the judge’s ruling before weeping into a handkerchief at its conclusion. She stepped forward to embrace her husband and the couple clung to each other, for a few moments oblivious to the clamour around them. At one point, Baldwin had to put his hands on the courtroom bar rail to steady himself.
The case, which had been hanging over his head for almost three years was suddenly, dramatically over. If found guilty, he had been facing up to 18 months in prison. Instead, he walked out of the court a free man.
It was a plot twist that no one saw coming, a real-life crime drama that most amateur sleuths would dismiss as too far-fetched.
For in the end, Baldwin’s trial did not hinge on the crucial questions at the heart of the case: did he pull the trigger on the gun; should he have checked to see if his gun was correctly loaded with blanks; was he guilty of criminal negligence?
Now we will never know what the jury would have made of these hotly contested issues.
Ultimately the trial was dismissed simply because the state prosecutor made a fatal blunder – how exactly we will never know.
Earlier that morning, before the court was in session, chief prosecutor Kari Morrissey seemed to know it was going to be a long day.
Few people were around as she laid out paperwork on her courtroom desk and conferred with a junior member of her team sitting just in front of the press benches.
‘There’s a glass of Scotch in our future,’ she said to him, which seemed to suggest a belief that triumph was within her grasp. Within hours, however, she would be on the rocks herself.
Looking back, it seems evident that something wild was in the wind as proceedings began on Friday.
There has never been much love lost between the prosecution and defence teams in this case, but matters were reaching a whole new pitch of bitter hostilities.
The atmosphere was increasingly tense; tempers were short and exchanges became heated. No wonder.
Just before 8pm the previous evening, the defence team had filed yet another motion to dismiss the case. This 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. However, this one was different. Suddenly we were on a war footing.
In the absence of the jury, the defence put forward its accusation that the prosecution had withheld evidence about a batch of ammunition. It had been turned over to the authorities several months ago by a witness who claimed that it was related to the shooting. Morrissey, for the prosecution, said the evidence was not relevant and had not been hidden, she just didn’t think it was important.
‘You don’t get to decide that,’ countered the defence, citing one of the key principles of American law – as it is in British law – that the prosecution have a duty to turn over all evidence, no matter if it is detrimental to their case or might assist the defence.
Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, 42, who was accidentally shot by Baldwin on the set of his movie Rust
Baldwin was rehearsing a scene when the gun he was holding discharged and hit Ms Hutchins. He has insisted that he did not pull the trigger or know why it contained live ammunition
The judge ordered the contested evidence to be presented and, in a bizarre turn of events, put on a pair of blue rubber gloves and examined them herself, picking through the bullets like someone rummaging through a punnet of strawberries looking for spoiled fruit. No one in court could quite believe what they were seeing.
Things got even stranger when, in a bid to save her unravelling case – and her reputation as one of the leading attorneys in New Mexico – Morrissey put herself on the witness stand.
‘Why are you doing this?’ asked the puzzled judge, whose patience was wearing thin. To explain why the evidence was irrelevant, was the response.
This desperate development was an indication of how unstuck Morrissey’s strategy had become, particularly as once on the stand, she had to admit that her co-prosecutor Erlinda Ocampo Johnson had resigned from the case earlier that day. ‘I left because I learned about this evidence when the public heard about it,’ Johnson said later. ‘My job is not to get a conviction, it is to put evidence before a jury.’
Morrissey was on her own – and her fall from grace was crushing. Throughout this trial, I had always admired her intelligence, her toughness, her formidable presence in the courtroom. In the months of litigation that preceded last week’s events, Baldwin’s elite team of expensive, New York lawyers had energetically depicted her as some kind of bitter chick from Hicksville, a small-town lawyer who just wanted a celebrity scalp at all costs, never mind the dispensation of justice.
A woman who had, they claimed, a particular animus against Baldwin, who is a polarising figure in America.
When he cross-examined Morrissey on Friday, Spiro, for the defence, took the opportunity to ask the prosecutor if she was prosecuting out of a sense of spite rather a sense of fairness.
‘You just don’t like Mr Baldwin, do you?’ he said, almost with a sneer. Morrissey replied that she ‘appreciated’ Baldwin’s politics as well as ‘the acting he did from Saturday Night Live’.
How mortifying to be damned with such faint praise, almost as if Morrissey was half-heartedly trying to impress a Tinder date with her liberalism.
Spiro pressed on, asking if she remembered calling his client a ‘c********r’ and an ‘arrogant p***k’ when talking privately to witnesses. ‘I don’t recall saying that,’ she replied.
It wasn’t exactly a robust denial. It didn’t exactly quash my rising suspicions that perhaps the defence team had been right about her all along.
Baldwin watched all this from his courtroom seat, perhaps hardly daring to dream that his nightmare might soon be over, totally not caring if Morrissey liked his Donald Trump impersonations or not.
The irony is that it is not clear whether the failure to disclose 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 live bullets on set. It was never an issue.
Baldwin was rehearsing a scene when the gun he was holding discharged. He has insisted that he did not pull the trigger or 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 the father of convicted armourer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed – took it upon himself to turn over a box of ammunition to authorities that he thought was connected to the shooting.
Could it have been that these mysterious bullets might have helped Gutierrez-Reed’s case? They certainly helped Baldwin’s, in ways he could never have dared hope.
For if the prosecution is discovered to have suppressed evidence either by mistake or on purpose, it is game over.
Alec and Hilaria Baldwin swept out of court without talking to reporters, but no one leaves this case as a hero. Pictured: The couple leaving First District Court on Thursday
Already, there is speculation that Gutierrez-Reed, who was also prosecuted by Morrissey and sentenced to 18 months for her part in the death of Halyna Hutchins, might soon be free, too.
‘The judge found intentional misconduct. We will be moving for dismissal of Hannah’s case,’ said her lawyer Jason Bowles.
When it was all over, Alec and Hilaria Baldwin swept out of court without talking to reporters. After the stresses and strains they have endured over the past three years, I feel pleased for them, but no one walks out of this case as a hero. And nothing alters the fact that a young woman died in entirely preventable circumstances.
Despite Friday’s remarkable triumph, this will probably not be the last time Baldwin sees the inside of a courtroom over this tragic accident.
‘We respect the court’s decision,’ said Brian Parish, who represents Halyna Hutchins’s widower and their nine-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 is not over until it’s over. And it is not over yet.
Additional reporting by Barbara McMahon
