Alec Baldwin’s defense team filed a motion dismiss his “Rust” manslaughter case on Friday, citing evidence which they said prosecutors had withheld from the defense.
The evidence in question is a collection of live ammunition rounds provided to prosecutors in March by retired Arizona police officer Troy Teske; this evidence was first mentioned during testimony in Baldwin’s trial on Thursday.
On Friday, Baldwin’s attorney Luke Nikas raised the matter again in a motion to have the case dismissed, asserting that the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s department failed on more than one occasion to inform the defense team it had possession of the bullets.
To defend these actions, Prosecutor Kari Morrissey took the unusual step of calling herself to the stand. Under oath, she testified under law enforcement as well as her office had determined years before that these bullets had “no evidentiary value.”
Nikas responded that prosecutors do not get to decide whether evidence should be excluded or not.
Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer demanded to see the rounds in question, which Morrissey handed to her.
Morrissey tried to tell Sommer that the defense had called crime scene technician Marissa Poppell Thursday night to ask her to bring the rounds to court and then called back to tell her not to bring them, but Sommer did not seem interested in hearing it.
The judge then opened the sealed envelope containing the ammunition and Poppell was called to the stand where she was quizzed by Baldwin’s other attorney, Alex Spiro.
When Morrissey questioned Poppell, she said she had never seen the ammunition or Poppell’s report before. She asked Poppell if she “buried it,” as the defense claimed, how did the attorneys know to question her about it on Thursday? “These are important questions,” she said.
Sommer had previously instructed all court officers to use gloves when handling the bullets, so when Morrissey touched some of them with her bare hands, the defense pointed out she should be wearing gloves. “These have been rolling around for three years,” Morrissey replied.
After a lengthy sidebar with the attorneys, Sommer recessed the jury for the day. “I’m sorry, trials are fluid,” she said. The judge initially told the jury to come back “tomorrow,” before it was pointed out that the next weekday is actually Monday. “It’s been a longer week than usual,” Sommer said with a sigh.
Soon after, Sommer dismissed the case entirely. Read more about that here.
This article was updated to correct information about the disputed evidence.
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