Luke Batten
At 10:15 AM (MT) on Friday, 16 jurors were dismissed for the weekend in one of the most high-profile trials in the state’s history. Although they thought they would be returning on Monday, they were informed by the court that their service had ended.
On Friday, July 12, the judge in the Rust case dropped the involuntary manslaughter charge against Alec Baldwin immediately bringing him to tears.
On Friday, July 12, the judge in the Rust case dropped the involuntary manslaughter charge against Alec Baldwin immediately bringing him to tears.
Before the jury was brought into the courtroom that day, the third day of the trial, Baldwin’s attorney Luke Nikas asked for the case against his client to be dropped, claiming that prosecutors sat on evidence that would have helped shed light onto how live ammunition was brought on to the set of the Western movie in 2021.
“The late discovery of this evidence during trial has impeded the effective use of evidence in such a way that it has impacted the fundamental fairness of the proceedings,” said Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer, explaining, in part, her decision to dismiss the case with prejudice.
Prosecutors said they deemed the ammo unrelated and unimportant, while Baldwin’s lawyers alleged they “buried” it and filed a motion to dismiss the case.
On Thursday, jurors in the Santa Fe trial heard about a theory on the ammunition — and a so-called good Samaritan who came forward to investigators in the last few months purporting to have evidence of that theory — from Baldwin’s defense attorney Alex Spiro.
