Alec Baldwin manslaughter case dropped by New Mexico prosecutor

A New Mexico criminal case against actor Alec Baldwin stemming from a fatal shooting on the set of his movie "Rust" in 2021 ended on Monday, with a prosecutor dropping her appeal of the case's dismissal.

According to a statement from the Frist Judicial District Attorney's office, Special Prosecutor Kari Morrissey withdrew that appeal.

Baldwin's lawyers, Luke Nikas and Alex Spiro said in a statement that "today's decision to dismiss the appeal is the final vindication of what Alec Baldwin and his attorneys have said from the beginning - this was an unspeakable tragedy, but Alec Baldwin committed no crime."

FILE PHOTO: US actor Alec Baldwin (L) attends his trial for involuntary manslaughter at Santa Fe County District Court in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on July 12, 2024. In October 2021, on the New Mexico set of the Western movie "Rust," a gun pointed by Baldwin discharged a live round, killing the film's cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounding its director. RAMSAY DE GIVE/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo

A New Mexico judge had dismissed involuntary manslaughter charges against Baldwin in July, agreeing with the actor's lawyers that Morrissey and the sheriff's office concealed evidence about the source of the live round that killed "Rust" cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in 2021.

The district attorney's office vehemently disagreed with the judge's decision to toss the case against Baldwin.

But the decision to drop the appeal of that decision was made after the Office of the Attorney General told Morrissey that it "did not intend to exhaustively pursue the appeal on behalf of the prosecution," according to the statement.

Hutchins died when Baldwin pointed a gun at her as they set up a camera shot on a movie set near Santa Fe. The gun fired a live round inadvertently loaded by the movie's chief weapons handler, Hannah Gutierrez. Gutierrez was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in March and sentenced to a month later.

Rust poster IMDb

The "30 Rock" actor denied ever pulling the trigger and said he had been directed to aim it at the camera. However, the FBI and an independent firearms expert found the gun would not fire without the trigger depressed.

The death of Hutchins was the first on-set fatal shooting with a live round mistaken for a dummy or blank round since Hollywood's silent era, according to historian Alan Rode.

Hollywood on-set shootings have in the past been settled through civil lawsuits, such as the last fatality in 1993 when Brandon Lee was killed when a blank round dislodged a bullet stuck in a revolver's barrel during filming of "The Crow."