The manslaughter trial against Alec Baldwin over the fatal shooting of Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins has been dismissed. Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer threw out the case over how police and prosecutors treated a handful of bullets, which they failed to turn over to the defence.
“The state is highly culpable for its failure to provide discovery to the defendant,” Judge Sommer said. “Dismissal with prejudice is warranted.” The dismissal came as a surprise as gasps were said to be heard in the courtroom and Baldwin was congratulated by his family and supporters.
More to come…
Withholding that kind of evidence is unconscionable. It tainted the entire investigation. They basically forced the judge to dismiss the case.
A bunch of people got away with the Panama Papers stuff because of chain of custody shenanigans.
Do you think that was intentional? Like was the prosecution paid off?
It looks like the armorer was a local and her dad’s cop buddies hid evidence to try to help her. At least one prosecutor signed off on it, because she testified that she didn’t turn over the evidence because she thought it was irrelevant.
There is no universe where live ammunition recovered from the scene is irrelevant.
Uh, they weren’t recovered from the scene.
The official law enforcement reports were falsified. We don’t know where the bullets they lied about came from. If the police deliberately lied on an official report once, why would you trust the rest of the “official” report?
Courts give law enforcement a lot of blind trust. If you can prove that this trust has been violated, everything they’ve done under that umbrella of trust comes into question.
If it’s this egregious and the prosecutor (s) were okay with it, we don’t even get to have a trial. Why would a fake investigation result in a trial?
The tragedy for the victims is that they’ll never truly know what happened, because the people entrusted with handling the investigation cared more about protecting their own and prosecuting a “Hollywood liberal” than finding out what really happened.
You think prosecutors need to be paid off to hide evidence and generally ignore the rights of defendants?