Actor Alec Baldwin hugs his attorney Alex Spiro at the conclusion of Baldwin’s trial on involuntary manslaughter at Santa Fe County District Court in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on July 12, 2024.
| Photo Credit: via Reuters

A New Mexico judge in the U.S. on Friday brought a sudden and stunning end to the involuntary manslaughter case against Hollywood actor Alec Baldwin, dismissing it in the middle of the actor’s trial and saying it cannot be filed again.

Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer dismissed the case based on the misconduct of police and prosecutors over the withholding of evidence from the defence in the 2021 shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the film Rust.

Baldwin cried, hugged his two attorneys, gestured to the front of the court, then turned to hug his crying wife Hilaria, the mother of seven of his eight children, holding the embrace for 12 seconds. He climbed into an SUV outside the Santa Fe courthouse without speaking to the media.

“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,” Marlowe Sommer said. “If this conduct does not rise to the level of bad faith it certainly comes so near to bad faith to show signs of scorching.”

The evidence that sank the case, revealed during the trial’s second day of testimony Thursday, was the existence of ammunition that was brought into the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office in March by a man who said it could be related to Hutchins’ killing. Prosecutors said they deemed the ammo unrelated and unimportant, while Baldwin’s lawyers alleged they “buried” it. The defence filed one of many motions they had made to dismiss the case over evidence issues. All the others were rejected. But this one took.

The judge’s decision ends the criminal culpability of the 66-year-old Baldwin after a nearly three-year saga that began when a revolver he was pointing at Hutchins during a rehearsal went off, killing her and wounding director Joel Souza.

“Our goal from the beginning was to seek justice for Halyna Hutchins, and we fought to get this case tried on its merits,” District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies said in a statement. “We are disappointed that the case did not get to the jury.”

The career of the Hunt for Red October and 30 Rock star and frequent Saturday Night Live host — who has been a household name for more than three decades — had been put into doubt, and he could have gotten 18 months in prison if convicted.

Baldwin and other producers still face civil lawsuits from Hutchins’ parents and sister.

Prosecutors did get one conviction for Hutchins’ death. Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the film’s armorer, was sentenced to 18 months in prison on an involuntary manslaughter conviction, which she is now appealing.

Her attorney Jason Bowles said Friday that he would be filing a motion to dismiss his client’s case as well.

“The judge upheld the integrity of the system in dismissing the case,” he told The Associated Press in an email.

File picture of Russell Brand
| Photo Credit: Reuters

British comedian and actor Russell Brand has denied any criminal wrongdoing as the Sunday Times newspaper reported four women had accused him of sexual assaults, including rape, during a seven-year period when he was at the height of his fame.

Brand, 48, the former husband of U.S. singer Katy Perry, issued a denial to unspecified “very serious criminal allegations” hours before they were published online by the newspaper on Saturday.

The Sunday Times did not say if any of the women had made complaints to the police. Reuters was unable to reach Brand’s representatives for further response after the paper’s report was published.

The Times, which reported the alleged incidents had taken place between 2006 and 2013, said one woman had made an allegation of rape, while another said Brand assaulted her when she was 16 and still at school. Two of the accusers reported the incidents occurred in Los Angeles, the paper said.

Channel 4 TV’s documentary show Dispatches, which was due to air further details of the allegations later on Saturday, also broadcast a number of clips of the women on X, formerly known as Twitter, describing the alleged incidents.

In a video message posted on social media, Brand said the accusations contained “a litany of extremely egregious and aggressive attacks as well as some pretty stupid stuff”.

“But amidst this litany of astonishing rather baroque attacks, are some very serious allegations that I absolutely refute,” he said.

“These allegations pertain to the time when I was working in the mainstream, when I was in the newspapers all the time, when I was in the movies. And as I’ve written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscuous,” Brand said.

“Now, during that time of promiscuity, the relationships I had were absolutely always consensual.”

The Sunday Times said its report was the result of a joint investigation with Dispatches that began in 2019.

Brand was once one of Britain’s most-high profile comedians, known for his flamboyant style and appearance, a regular on television and radio, including working for the BBC, during the 2000s while he also starred in a number of films such as Get Him to the Greek.

He married Perry in a lavish wedding in India in 2010, but filed for divorce just 14 months later. He now mainly focuses on online projects and has a large following for his regular podcasts and shows on social media.

“I don’t mind them using my books and my stand-up to talk about my promiscuous consensual conduct in the past,” he said in his video message. “What I seriously refute are these very, very serious criminal allegations.”