Alec Baldwin’s criminal case involved ammunition at its shocking beginning and sudden end

SANTA FE, N.M. – The criminal case against Alec Baldwin was all about tampering with bullets from the beginning. And it was that tampering that ended the case.

When cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was shot and killed nearly three years ago on the set of Rust in New Mexico, one question dogged authorities but never definitively answered: How could real, deadly ammunition have ended up mixed in with the blanks that traditionally make up movie shootouts and the inert dummy rounds that play the role of on-screen bullets, and then in the gun that Baldwin, in character, pointed at Hutchins?

Evidence that Baldwin’s lawyers unearthed as part of a possible explanation — ammunition handed over by a man who walked into the Santa Fe County sheriff’s office in March — brought the actor’s manslaughter trial to a quick and abrupt end Friday when a judge ruled that prosecutors had failed to share that evidence.

One of the two special prosecutors in the case, who resigned just hours before the dismissal, told The Associated Press on Saturday that the judge’s decision was correct.

“When you step back and ask yourself, ‘OK, could the defense have used this to prepare their defense?’ And the answer may be yes. … Then the appropriate remedy should be dismissal,” Erlinda Ocampo Johnson said, adding that it was unfortunate that the jury “never got to hear the facts and make a decision.”

With the trial over in its early stages, it is difficult to say whether the arguments presented by Baldwin’s elite and expensive legal team could have clarified the live ammunition issue or further muddled it.

But the dismissal closed one of the last avenues through which the bullet issue could have been addressed.

“I feel like this case is done and we’ll never know,” said John Day, a New Mexico attorney who has followed the case but is not involved in it. “You can’t do a bad investigation again. Once it’s done, that’s it. There’s really nothing else to do.”

The other special prosecutor, Kari Morrissey, and other authorities said they were fairly certain the answer to the question of at least who brought the live rounds to the set, if not how they got into Baldwin’s gun: Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the film’s gunsmith, who was convicted in March of involuntary manslaughter and received the 18 months in prison that Baldwin could have gotten if convicted.

Photos found on Gutierrez-Reed’s cellphone showed her with the box the bullets came from, according to testimony this week from a crime scene technician.

And at the hearing that led to the dismissal of the case Friday, Seth Kenney, who provided the guns and some of the blanks and dummy rounds to the filming of “Rust,” testified that shortly before “Rust,” Gutierrez-Reed called and texted him about firing live rounds with the guns that were to be used as props in the Nicolas Cage film “The Old Way,” which she was working on in Montana.

“I said ‘absolutely not’ and ‘this is a big mistake,'” Kenney said on the stand. “I even said ‘it always ends in tears.'”

Baldwin’s lawyers have tried to suggest that authorities failed to adequately investigate Kenney and were too intimate with him, and that they overlooked his possible responsibility for the live ammunition because Gutierrez-Reed could be directly linked to Baldwin. The defense has not been able to provide a full version of this theory because the trial ended too quickly.

Police and prosecutors say there is no evidence Kenney was responsible, and he testified Friday that he was absolutely certain he was not the source.

Gutierrez-Reed appealed her verdict while serving her sentence. Her attorney said he plans to file a new motion to dismiss after the Baldwin ruling.

When the decision was made, Baldwin wept in the courtroom and hugged his lawyers and his wife.

He made his first public comments on Saturday when he thanked his supporters.

“There are too many people who have supported me for me to thank now,” Baldwin said in a brief Instagram post accompanying a photo of himself sitting in the courtroom. “To all of you, you will never know how much I appreciate your kindness to my family.”

Several civil lawsuits against the producers of Baldwin and “Rust” may yet shed light on the bullet issue.

A lawsuit filed by Hutchins’ husband and son, which was settled out of court, may be revived. The cinematographer’s parents, sister and crew members are continuing their lawsuits in court.

Lawyers in those cases won’t have the investigative power of police, but they could have an advantage the prosecution didn’t have. Resolving the criminal case could pave the way for Baldwin to testify in a civil lawsuit if he can no longer argue that doing so would expose him to criminal liability.

“I’m still here. We have a very large legal team,” said Gloria Allred, an attorney representing Hutchins’ parents and “Rust” script supervisor Mamie Mitchell. “I’ve been doing this for 48 years, as long as I’ve been practicing law, and I’ve never let a criminal case being dismissed or a criminal conviction that was later overturned on appeal discourage me.”

Allred said she didn’t know how long it would take for a civil trial to take place. But “however long it takes to persevere, we want to see justice and accountability for the untimely tragedy of losing this beautiful and talented cinematographer,” she said.

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Dalton reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writer Susan Montoya Brian contributed from Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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For more information on the Alec Baldwin manslaughter trial, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/alec-baldwin