SANTA FE: A New Mexico judge sent home jurors in the involuntary manslaughter trial of Alec Baldwin on Friday in a surprise move after lawyers for the actor sought dismissal of charges alleging police hid evidence of the source of the live round that killed Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in 2021.

On the third day of Baldwin’s trial, the actor’s lawyers said the Santa Fe sheriff’s office took possession of live rounds as evidence in the case but failed to list them in the Rust investigation file or disclose their existence to defense lawyers.

“This was hidden from us,” Baldwin’s lawyer Alex Spiro told a sheriff’s office crime scene technician under cross examination out of jurors’ hearing.

Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer outlined a plan to hear evidence on the motion. It was not clear when she would rule on it.

University of New Mexico law professor Joshua Kastenberg, who has been following the case but is not involved, said the charge against Baldwin could be thrown out if the prosecution failed to disclose evidence to Baldwin’s lawyers or they did not know of the evidence until the trial started.

“A judge could dismiss if there was malfeasance on the part of the sheriff’s office,” Kastenberg said.

The judge later told jurors to come back on Monday morning, acknowledging the move was unusual. She did not tell jurors why they were being dismissed for the day without hearing evidence.

The technician, Marissa Poppel, said the rounds were not hidden from Baldwin and she was told to file them and details on how they were obtained under a different case number to the Rust case. She disputed Spiro’s assertion the Colt .45 ammunition matched the round that killed Hutchins.

Published in Dawn, July 13th, 2024