Alec Baldwin’s Rust capturing case is sensationally DISMISSED

Alec Baldwin broke down in tears and hugged his wife as his involuntary manslaughter case was sensationally dismissed.

The judge at the court in Santa Fe, New Mexico, said that there had been errors by the prosecution in the handling of evidence, which she said ‘impacted the fundamental fairness of the case.’ 

The extraordinary decision came after a day-long hearing without the jury present over bullets that should have been in evidence.

Baldwin’s lawyers claimed they were ‘concealed’ from them and ‘buried’ in another case file.

The issue had upended the trial for Baldwin, 66, who pleaded not guilty to two counts of involuntary manslaughter.

Alec Baldwin broke down in tears ang hugged his wife Hilaria as his involuntary manslaughter case was sensationally dismissed

The actor was accused of negligence for accidentally firing a live round into the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, on the set of the movie Rust in October 2021 and killing her.

Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, 26, the armorer on the set of Rust, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter earlier this year.

She was later jailed for 18 months, a sentence Baldwin had faced if found guilty.

During the ill-tempered and chaotic hearing on Friday, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer asked for the bullets to be brought into court where – in unusual scenes – she put on gloves and inspected them herself.

Baldwin’s lawyer Luke Nikas told the court that the bullets were brought into police in to Santa Fe cops in March this year by former police officer Troy Teske in March.

Teske claimed they were the same kind that were used to shoot Hutchins.

Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins died after being hit by a bullet from the prop gun that Baldwin was handling on the Rust film set in October 2021

The film set’s armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed poses for mugshot after being convicted of involuntary manslaughter 

In her ruling Judge Mary Marlow Sommer said that dismissal with prejudice was a ‘very extreme sanction’ but the threshold had been met.

She said that the ‘suppressed evidence’ had ‘impacted the fundamental fairness of the case’, and that prosecutors were ‘highly culpable’ for the errors and had ‘unilaterally withheld’ the details about the ammunition.

The judge said that the ‘wilful withholding of information was intentional and deliberate’, which was ‘so near to bad faith as to show signs of scorching prejudice’ and there was ‘no way for the court to right this wrong’.

Baldwin’s attorney Nikas claimed that prosecutors ‘buried’ this evidence by giving it a different case number to the main Rust investigation.

As a result, when Baldwin’s lawyers went to the police to view all the Rust ammunition in April, they were not shown it, a breach of evidentiary rules.

Prosecutor Kari Morrissey said that they had interviewed Teske last year and were skeptical of him because he is close friends with Thell Reed, the father of Gutierrez-Reed.

Morrissey said they concluded Teskey was sending them on a ‘wild goose chase’ to point the blame at somebody other than Gutierrez-Reed.

She said: ‘It’s a man (Thell Reed) trying to protect his daughter and providing information that doesn’t even match the evidence that was found at the scene’.

Photos taken by detectives with Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office show the aftermath of the incident in October 2021

The case was sensationally thrown out on Friday due to a disagreement over bullets admitted into evidence 

The actor’s wife Hilaria, pictured on Thursday, was a mainstay by his side during the trial 

In November last year Teske offered to send them the ammunition but he was in Arizona so Morrissey asked him to send a photo.

They didn’t look like the live rounds taken from the set of Rust so Morrissey didn’t ask for the bullets to be collected by a local police force, the court heard.

But Judge Marlowe Sommer expressed frustration during the hearing and pressed Cpl. Alexandria Hancock of the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office about why the bullets were not put with the Rust file.

Cpl Hancock said that the decision was made after discussion with prosecutors

At one point Morrissey herself gave evidence in bizarre scenes where nobody had requested her to do so.

She insisted the ammunition from Teske were not similar to those found on the set of Rust, which is why she didn’t want them analyzed further.