Alec Baldwin lost his bid to dismiss his involuntary manslaughter indictment Friday when a New Mexico judge ruled he still must face trial even though the FBI damaged the gun involved in the shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. In an 18-page ruling issued Friday, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer wrote that “a significant amount of evidence indicates that the unaltered firearm did not possess apparent exculpatory value” before it was damaged in forensic testing months after the fatal shooting. She specifically pointed to statements Baldwin made to a New Mexico Occupational Health and Safety Bureau Officer in which he stated, “The problem didn’t have to do with the gun.
It had to do with the bullet.” Importantly, Judge Marlowe Sommer ruled that they saw no evidence that investigators or prosecutors knew the gun possessed possible “exculpatory” value before an FBI technician started whacking it with a rawhide mallet. “The court concludes that defendant fails to establish that the state acted in bad faith when destroying certain internal components of the firearm in the course of accidental discharge testing,” the judge wrote.
She ruled that once Baldwin’s trial begins next month in Santa Fe, prosecutors will be required to “disclose the destructive nature of the testing, the resulting loss and its relevance.” Baldwin then will be able to cross-examine the state witnesses to set forth his theory that the gun may have been modified before the shootin.
