Alec Baldwin’s ‘Rust’ Criminal Trial Will Go Ahead Next Month, Judge Says
deadline.comAlec Baldwin will still face a New Mexico jury next month for his involuntary manslaughter trial in the 2021 death of Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
Keeping her promise of earlier this week to issue a ruling by today, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer rejected the latest attempt by the Emmy winning actor’s Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP defense team to get the case dismissed.
In this instance, Baldwin’s primary lawyers Luke Nikas and Alex Spiro struck out after arguing in a filing earlier this month that “the law is clear: the government may not knowingly deprive the defense of potentially useful evidence by destroying it.” Judge Sommer saw it differently. “Ultimately …the Court finds and concludes that Defendant fails to establish that the State acted in bad faith when destroying certain internal components of the firearm in the course of the accidental discharge testing,” she wrote in fairly dense 18-page order released this afternoon.
The New York attorneys, along Albuquerque-based defense lawyer Heath Leblanc, unsuccessfully argued the evidence motion, as well as another failed dismissal move, with Special Prosecutors Kari Morrissey and Erlinda Johnson in a virtual hearing with Judge Sommer on June 21 and 24.
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