Law&Crime Sidebar - Alec Baldwin’s 'Rust" Manslaughter Case Could Soon Go Back to Trial

Episode Date: November 27, 2024

Special prosecutor Kari Morrissey recently filed a notice of appeal that asks the New Mexico Court of Appeals to reinstate involuntary manslaughter charges against actor Alec Baldwin. Baldwin was on the "Rust" movie set when the gun he was holding went off, injuring the film’s director and killing the cinematographer. When Baldwin went to trial in July, the judge overseeing the case determined police and prosecutorial misconduct meant the case needed to be thrown out. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber discusses the latest with New Mexico attorney John Day.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: If you’re ever injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. You can submit a claim in 8 clicks or less without having to leave your couch. To start your claim, visit: https://www.forthepeople.com/LCSidebarHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger and Christina FalconeScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. A New Mexico prosecutor is still fighting to nail actor Alec Baldwin for manslaughter, this after a film set shooting killed cinematographer Helena Hutchins. The state is appealing the decision to throw out Baldwin's case mid-trial from over the summer. But what does this latest filing mean for the future of a case? We're going to sit down with New Mexico defense attorney John Day to get his take. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by law and crime.

I'm Jesse Weber. All right, let's talk once again about Alec Baldwin. Now, you might have thought that that whole case was wrapped up and done, but maybe not because the most recent filing from special prosecutor Carrie Morrissey out in New Mexico is just the latest attempt to get Alec Baldwin back into a courtroom to face charges. You may recall that Alec Baldwin's trial was well underway in July of the this year when Judge Mary Marlow Sommer suddenly threw it out, citing misconduct, particularly from the prosecutors, for apparently withholding evidence from the defense, namely ammunition

that may or may not have played a factor in this case. We'll talk about it, but the judge's decision also confirmed that those charges could not be filed again. She dismissed this case with prejudice, but that hasn't stopped Carrie Morrissey from coming forward because she is appealing that decision. filed a notice of appeal on November 21st, but it was just made public yesterday, and attached to her notice to the Court of Appeals, this higher court, were the two prior rulings in the lower court. So the original ruling that the case would be dismissed and the denial of the state's motion to

bring the charges back. So you likely know most of the key details in this case, but let me go through it one more time. Alec Baldwin was producing and starring in a small budget film in New Mexico called Rust. In October of 2021, he was filming a scene inside of a small church where he was holding a gun. Now, there wasn't supposed to be any ammunition in that gun, live ammunition, not live ammunition, but apparently there was, still not entirely clear how that happened. And the prop gun went off and a live bullet hit cinematographer Helena Hutchins, as well as director, Joel Sousa. He was hit in the shoulder. He survived, but Helena did not. And the young armor for the set, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, she was arrested and she was charged

with involuntary manslaughter because after all, she was in charge of all the weapons on the set. And this was one of her first big jobs working as the lead armor. Now, she maintained her innocence saying there was an overall lack of training and care with the weapons on set. And there was also allegations that Alec Baldwin couldn't be controlled. But a jury ended up convicting her of involuntary manslaughter. And she was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Her defense team appealed for a new trial. That has been rejected. And Alec Baldwin, he went through his own roller coaster of charges since he was the one

holding the gun that day. He always has said, though, that the gun just went off. He didn't pull the trigger, but you have multiple experts who have said that's just not possible. And like Gutierrez-Reed, Baldwin was also charged in the aftermath of this shooting with involuntary manslaughter. But then in April of 2023, after the first special prosecutor and the DA both stepped aside from the case, new special prosecutors were brought.

bought in. Charges against Alec Baldwin were dropped, but it was announced that the investigation was active and ongoing. But that investigation led to a grand jury proceeding. And in January of 24, the jury indicted Alec Baldwin once again for involuntary manslaughter. And he entered a not guilty plea. He waived his arraignment. And Baldwin's trial finally got underway in July of 2024. But then it came to a screeching halt, thanks to testimony about some ammunition that had and brought to the sheriff's office. The man who turned in the ammo said it could be related to Hutchins' killing. Now, prosecutors had apparently known about the existence of this ammunition since the days after the shooting, but they decided seemingly unilaterally it wasn't relevant

while Alec Baldwin's lawyer said, this is a case of burying evidence. So the defense filed a motion to dismiss the case because of this. That led to a hearing. This was outside the presence of the jury with the judge trying to sort out what exactly happened here. Now, I'm going to get through all of this, but I want to bring in John Day, who's a Santa Fe criminal defense attorney who helped us cover what was supposed to be Alec Baldwin's trial back in July, but instead turned in this kind of bit of a legal circus. John, first, were you expecting Carrie Morrissey to appeal this to file a notice of appeal to a higher court? Not surprised that Carrie Morrissey filed her notice of appeal. She's, you know, what is she doing? She's essentially trying to salvage not only the case,

but also her reputation. I think a lot of people believe she had indicated all along that she was going to fight this every step of the way. So the fact that she's still at it is not a surprise. Now, I'm going to get into what the court might do. We'll talk about that, but I'm really happy to have you here because I want to go through different aspects of how this all happened. So during the trial, we had this crime scene technician. She was on the stand, Marissa Popple. And she was testifying about what was collected at the scene, like the ammunition. And that is when the defense dropped a bombshell during cross-examination. And a good Samaritan walked into the police station and gave you the lethal ammunition, didn't that?

After the Hannah Gutierrez trial, there was an individual that came to the police station and stated they had ammunition. And they turned in the ammunition. Yes. And they gave it to you, right? Yes. And they told you that this was the ammunition that ended up with Seth Kenney that killed Ms. Hutchins, right?

I do not recall all of their statements. Who did you tell about that? During that conversation, my lieutenant, Lieutenant Brian Brandel was with me. and Detective Hancock was aware of that individual that he had come to the sheriff's office. And you never vouchered that and turned it over to the defense, did you? It is, it was a dock information situation. I don't know what that makes. explain that to me. Meaning that I was instructed by my lieutenant to create a doc info report on it.

And, I mean, what does that mean? It means we're documenting information that this individual came and gave this ammunition to us. Okay, but you didn't, I mean, he told you it had to do with the rush shooting, correct? Yes. How come you didn't inventory it and put it with all the rest of the evidence in the rust case? I was instructed to put this in as a doc information case, which I did, and is under that case number. You buried it? No. Now, Troy Teske, who's this retired police officer and friend of Gutierrez-Reed's father, Thel Reed, a very well-known armor, he was known to authority since a few weeks after the shooting. But the prosecution didn't have the evidence in hand. And since they decided that the ammunition wasn't relevant to the case. Testing was never done and some

information about it wasn't put into the same file as the rest of the Rust case. So Alec Baldwin's team didn't have it when they looked at ballistic evidence. I agreed with Detective Hancock. This has no evidentiary value. We're not going to continue to go down this rabbit hole. It simply doesn't have any evidentiary value and the defense was aware of it. Ms. Morrissey does not get to determine what has evidentiary value and what doesn't. Now, Teske ended up bringing the ammunition to the sheriff's department back in March. As Gutierrez-Reed's case, her trial was coming to an end. Now, the defense, what they did is they called for the case to be dismissed against Alec Baldwin.

And in an effort to keep that from happening, Carrie Morrissey, the special prosecutor herself, got on the stand to testify. So I understood that Detective Hancock had communication with Mr. Teske about trying to get those rounds, and Detective Hancock was unable to get those rounds from Mr. Teske. I did not find that particularly concerning because those rounds had never left Arizona. The filming of Rust was in the state of New Mexico, and the rounds that were taken from PDQ went from Arizona to Texas to Albuquerque. So ammunition that is in the state of Arizona that has never left Arizona did not strike me that it had significant evidentiary value. Then, oh, and I will say, I believe I actually saw a photo of it. At that point in time, I was able to look at the

ammunition myself, and it was visibly dissimilar than the rounds from the set of rest. We then cut to November of 2023. Mr. Bowles has put Mr. Teske on a witness list for the Hannah Gutier's case. We conducted a pretrial interview with Mr. Teske on November 2nd of 2023. At that point in time, he brought up that he was still in possession of these live rounds that were Thel Reed's live rounds that had never left the state. of Arizona. I then, when he started, I think he indicated during the pretrial interview that they were from the same batch that was sourced from Joe Swanson, and I then said, we should get those from you. I had a conversation with Detective Hancock after that pretrial interview about how we could get the rounds from Mr. Teske, and we were trying to figure out if we could send a local

law enforcement agency to pick them up. But the defense accused Morrissey of trying to hide what could be important evidence and claimed she was doing it to bring Alec Baldwin down. The truth of this matter is you don't like Mr. Baldwin very much, do you? You know, that is absolutely untrue. I actually really appreciate Mr. Baldwin's movies. I really appreciated the acting that he did on Saturday Night Live, and I really appreciate his politics. You told one of the witnesses who disagreed with you during an interview that you thought Mr. Baldwin wasn't . . I do not recall saying that. All right, John, what did you make of Carrie Morrissey getting up on the stand?

It's something you don't see every day. I've never seen. I've been practicing in New Mexico for almost 30 years in courtroom. and I've never seen that before, and I think it obviously did not make a good impression on the judge. And at the end of the day, it didn't do Kerry Morrissey any good, and it probably hurt her case in a significant way. She was grasping at straws at that point. But it was clear, and everyone was watching this, this judge was pretty outraged that Carrie Morrissey, the prosecution, on its own, decided that this potential evidence, wasn't relevant to the case and wouldn't be helpful to the defense. And so made the command decision, we're not going to show it to him.

Now, of course, Kerry Morrissey says that was a mistake. The judge didn't buy it. What is supposed to happen? Because look, I imagine a prosecutor in a criminal case gets all sorts of information. Do they just have to turn everything over to the defense or can they use a bit of discretion? No, the obligation of a prosecutor, and I'm a former prosecutor, went through this lots of times. You get evidence. You're not the one who's the gatekeeper.

You don't say, you know what, I don't think this is going to help the defense, so we're just going to stick it in a file in a drawer somewhere and not show it to them. You have an obligation, an ethical obligation, a professional obligation, to take that evidence and say, look, defense team, I don't know what this is, but we have this. Somebody walked it in. Here it is. You can do what you want. Of course, the Baldwin's team said, well, if we had known about this, if we had seen this, we could have incorporated this. This could be significant. and judge, the prosecutor isn't the one who decides whether or not this helps our case.

And by the way, just going back to her on the stand, you think this appeal right now is trying to vindicate her to? Because I have to imagine her taking the stand, her explaining herself, the judge not believing it. Those clips have gone viral. It's not great, I would imagine, I think arguably, objectively, wasn't a great day for her. Do you think that this appeal and hopefully in appellate court for her overturning what Judge Somer did was vindication for her? Is that one of the reasons you think she's appealing this? Look, and New Mexico is a small population, a poor state. The state has spent about almost $800,000 on trying to get Alec Baldwin in prison, basically.

Carrie Morrissey stepped in after a lot of missteps by the original DA, the first special prosecutor. There's an argument that there's been a lot of incompetence on the prosecution side. Carrie Morrissey is, again, not surprising that she's trying to go to the Court of Appeal. and say the judge abused her discretion. We ought to start over, bring Alec Baldwin back into Santa Fe, bring Alec Baldwin back into court. But I think a lot of people believe she's just trying to salvage what is a huge train wreck of a prosecution.

Yeah, it really was. There was so many problems with this prosecution. And in the end, the judge throughout the case, it was a move that stunned everyone watching, and it brought Alec Baldwin to tears in the courtroom. The court concludes that this conduct is highly prejudicial to the defendant. The jury has been sworn, Jeopardy has attached, and this disclosure during the course of trial is so late that it undermines the defendant's preparation for trial. There is no way for the court to write this wrong.

The state's discovery violation has injected a needless and curable delay into the instant jury trial. Dismissal with prejudice is warranted to ensure the integrity of the judicial system and the efficient administration of justice. Your motion to dismiss with prejudice. is granted. And one of the really interesting things here is that that ammunition that Teske had brought to the sheriff's department would likely have had no effect whatsoever on Baldwin's trial because he wasn't accused of being involved in the procurement of ammunition or anything like that. That was about the armor. But since this wasn't disclosed, the judge said that is a big enough mistake that the case had to be thrown out. So, John, did you agree with that? I mean, I'm correct,

right? It would have been so much more advantageous. for the prosecution to turn off, to turn it over to the defense, because I don't think it really would have affected the case. I think that's right. I think it's very likely that this wouldn't have had an effect, although a couple of things here. First, we saw the testimony of the crime scene tech and then Kerry Morris, you understand, it did look a little shady.

There were putting this information in a separate file in the sheriff's office. I mean, it's the easiest thing to do is to do the right thing. You know, you get some information on a case. You get some evidence. You stick it in the case file. It did look like there was some. effort to try to obfuscate, to try to assemble, to try to put this somewhere that it wouldn't be obvious for the defense. The other part of this is Waldman's defense team, I mean, let's face it,

they were phenomenal. And they could have, who knows what they would have done with this, but they were very canny lawyers. They outlawy lawyers in this case. And so while it may not have had an effect, the evidence that came in this ammunition, who knows what these lawyers would have done with that. That's fair. So it might not have had a, It might not have had a substantive effect in terms of what we're talking about the charges. But if you can show that this was either a sloppy investigation or a sloppy prosecution and that they were just had, you know, they're only focused on Alec Baldwin and Alec Baldwin and Alec Baldwin and we're doing things that were a little shady, that could definitely have worked in the defense's favor in terms of a jury. And by the way, she dismissed this, as I said, with prejudice, meaning the charges cannot be refiled against Alec Baldwin. But as you see what Carrie Morrissey is doing now, but on top of all that drama that was swirling around the courthouse that day and the shockwaves that had sent through people watching this trial, it turns out one of the prosecutors actually resigned over the alleged burying of evidence.

I resigned because this morning I learned for the first time that there was some evidence that was not turned over to the defense in this particular case. So with all that in mind, Morrissey has now appealed to the New Mexico Court of Appeals asking for that dismissal to be thrown out. And her latest filing includes two prior orders from the trial judge that rejected her efforts to get this trial going up again. Now, the first of those is the order granting defendant Alec Baldwin's expedited motion for dismissal and sanctions from the end of July. And the order goes through the testimony of the hearing, including possible discovery violations. It gives legal analysis of the alleged misconduct by the prosecution. and then at the end, it orders that the case be dismissed. Then in September, Morrissey filed an amended motion to reconsider dismissal with prejudice.

But in a response, the judge seemed to chastise the prosecution for when this issue was first raised and taking so long to file a motion to reconsider. According to the judge's order, the state filed on September 5th when the deadline for initiating an appeal was August 30th. And the judge wrote thus, because the state's amended motion was filed outside the time limit for the state to initiate its appeal, the amended motion is untimely. Therefore, the court does not find the amended motion well taken due to its untimeliness. And it also turns out that the 52-page motion to reconsider exceeded the page limits defined by a local

rule. It shouldn't have been more than 10 pages. And if the state knew it was going to be longer, they are required to notify the court and get permission of that. But apparently, they didn't do that. So, John, talk to me about what you make of the judge. maybe not entertaining this on technical grounds? Well, you know, I think these errors,

they're certainly consistent with the way this case has been prosecuted from the beginning. I don't think it's surprising that at the end of the game, there's still some kind of serious mistakes being made. But, you know, you've got a judge who has been consistent in her own rulings and who has been consistent throughout the trial and pointing out what she thought were problems with the prosecution providing discovery.

not afraid to challenge them. And in fact, subsequent to the Baldwin trial, this judge and the local DA's office are still battling out over witnesses who testified in the Baldwin trial. There are new cases that involve the crime tech, for example, and the credibility of that crime technician is still at issue in cases that are coming to court long after the Baldwin trial. So a lot of contention here, but I think at the end of the day, this judge got a lot of approval, I think from the legal community here for making a tough call, but also being kind of outraged at the way the case had been prosecuted. It didn't make her necessarily popular with the DA's office, but I can't imagine why. But that is interesting, though, that you say that that those

witnesses are now the credibility comes in, comes an issue in other cases. I didn't know that. Now, Morrissey, going back to this filing, at times, I would say pretty spicy in her filings. for example, when it comes to the page limit rule, in her filing, Morrissey wrote, if the court believes the rule should be followed, the state requests the court to provide guidance to the parties with regard to the never-ending flouting of the local rules. And Morrissey also said that the court misunderstood the facts in this case, writing, grounds warranting a motion to reconsider include an intervening change in the controlling law, new evidence previously unavailable, and the need to correct clear error or prevent manifest

justice. Thus, a motion for reconsideration is appropriate where the court has misapprehended the facts, a party's position, or the controlling law. But the judge determined that the state didn't make strong enough arguments for why the court should reconsider. So the motion was denied. John, your reaction to that. Well, you know, and you talk about spicy language in these and these filings, that's been the tenor of this case, the tension between the prosecution and the judge And the language certainly goes beyond, I think, what people would expect from a prosecutor who's a bit more remote from the facts. But again, this thing has been personalized all along in terms of the clash of personalities between the special prosecutor, the Baldwin defense team, and the judge. And again, remember, the special prosecutor has gone after Baldwin in some very personal terms.

And I think that's raised issues in people's minds about what's really the motivation here. Is this gone beyond just a sort of a neutral prosecutor? someone looking at the facts and suddenly when people's reputations are on the line nationally and internationally and you get this sense of there's a is there a vendetta against baldwin i mean you know at the end of the day the court of appeals is going to decide did this trial judge abuse her discretion but the concept of bringing alec baldman back to santa face sticking him back in court is certainly um kind of a remarkable picture in people's minds and if this case does get started again i do wonder if she would have to recuse herself because of some of the things this

comments that she made about Alec Baldwin. Now, I will say, on the going back full 360 here, Morrissey has filed notice that she's going to be taking this issue up to the state's Court of Appeals. Could they rule differently, John? Yes, you know, I've learned never to predict what an appellate court's going to do. They may look at this in an objective way and say, yes, the judge abused her discretion. Yes, there shouldn't have been a dismissal based on this evidence and the, you know, the court of appeals may accept the argument. by the special prosecutor that this, at the end of the day, this wouldn't have made much of a difference anyway. It's basically harmless error. The court of appeals might say, go back

and restart the case, bring Alec Baldwin back. I don't know what they're going to do. It's a very, I think we have a very thoughtful court of appeals. I've seen some great opinions coming out. I'm going to be the last one to predict what they would do. They may look at the argument by the special prosecutor and say, yeah, in spite of all the tension, in spite of all the spicy, flowery language in spite of the fact that personalities bled into this case at the end of the day, go back and do it again. Yeah, I mean, it's tough to predict because I didn't predict that was going to be the end of how the case was going to end with Alec Baldwin.

And just to put a bow on this, the film Rust, it actually had its world premiere just last week at this film festival, a film festival in Poland. There was a tribute to Helena Hutchins with a minute of silence before the showing of the film. There was an introduction by Joel Sousa, the director, again, who was injured in that shooting. Hutchins' mother has accused Alec Baldwin of trying to profit off of her pain, but a representative for the movie issued a statement saying that the decision to complete the film was made with the full support of the family. Alec Baldwin, he didn't attend the premiere.

Festival organizers say he wasn't invited. Baldwin has previously told reporters that he hasn't seen the final cut of the film, and he doesn't want to, at least right now. John Day, thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate it. Thank you. All right, everybody. is all we have for you right now here on Sidebar.

Thank you so much for joining us, as always. And please subscribe to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. Speak to next to you. or Spotify.