Alec Baldwin Fires ‘Rust’ Prosecutor for Threatening His ‘Right to Due Process’ Over Deadly Filming

It could be months before a trial begins in Alec Baldwin’s October 2021 shooting death trial rust Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, the actor is now accusing prosecutors of violating his “constitutional rights”.

“The government’s actions constituted a disregard for its ethical obligations and threatened Mr. Baldwin’s right to a fair trial,” says a filing from Baldwin’s defense team Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan of New York City and Dallas ( read here). .

The latest crackdown by prosecutors, released Tuesday in New Mexico, refers to statements by Santa Fe District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies and the late special attorney Andrea Reeb about the indie western star’s “gross negligence and reckless disregard.” /Manufacturers’ security on the rust Movie Set” and more.

With a view to a preliminary investigation or mini-trial on May 3, the case against Baldwin and the co-accused and ex-rust Gunsmith Hannah Gutierrez-Reed appears wounded and shrinking with 1,000 paper cuts. Despite several previous public salvos and recent retractions, prosecutors had no comment today on Baldwin’s team’s latest filings.

It was more than a year after Hutchins’ murder before Baldwin and Reed were charged in late January with two counts of involuntary manslaughter. it was “unconstitutional.

As it stands, Baldwin and Reed face up to 18 months in prison and about $5,000 in fines if a jury returns a guilty verdict. Both pleaded not guilty.

After falling short on Feb. 24 in an attempt to block Reed’s application to keep a gun at her home in self-defense, Carmack-Altwies found her office on the losing end of a partisan fight with a other name found. .

Only last summer did the district attorney defend the appointment of Reeb, the former district attorney for New Mexico’s Ninth Judicial Circuit, as rust Special prosecutor after February 7 calls for her disqualification came from the defense. Facing “unconstitutional” protests and conflicts of interest for being a GOP member of the state legislature, Reeb decided to jump before he was pushed. On March 14, two weeks before a hearing on infamous Democrat Baldwin’s disqualification petition, Reeb announced that she had “made the difficult decision to step down as a special counsel in the DA’s office. rust Case.”

If you thought this was the end for now, you may not have been paying enough attention to Team Baldwin’s strategy. In the filing filed Tuesday, the defense led by Luke Nikas jumped on revelations from the New York Times that last June Reeb asked Carmack-Altwies to “disclose the fact that she was working on the case to advance her political career,” according to the filing. At the time, Reeb was running for state representative in New Mexico in the November midterm elections.

In the weeks before Reeb was officially named special prosecutor, the district attorney responded to Reeb’s policy question by email, saying, “I plan to bring it to you or send it out in a press release when we finish the investigation gain.”

“Representative Reeb’s pursuit of this case against Mr. Baldwin to advance her political career is another abuse of the system and another violation of Mr. Baldwin’s constitutional rights,” the defendant said in the petition.

For now, Baldwin’s team agrees that the criminal case can proceed with Carmack-Altwies and an as-yet-unannounced “well appointed” special prosecutor sharing duties. Still, the defense brief by Albuquerque’s Quinn Emanuel and Bailey, LeBlanc & Lane PC laid the groundwork for another attack, going on to say:

In light of Reeb’s constitutionally required resignation, Mr. Baldwin returned the disqualification motion as moot. But Mr. Baldwin does not waive the right to raise the issue of disqualification in the future or otherwise challenge the prosecution as a whole, on the grounds that the State’s past conduct — including evidence that Reeb brought the case to their advancing political career – the involvement of the illegal firearm upgrade, the State’s inappropriate and damaging public statements and MP Reeb’s key role in the investigation and prosecution violated Lord Baldwin’s constitutional rights.

According to a comprehensive and FBI-backed investigation released in November 2022 by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office, Baldwin and rust Armor Reed was formally charged by Santa Fe prosecutors on Jan. 31 in the Oct. 21, 2021, death of Hutchins at Bonanza Creek Ranch outside Santa Fe. rust Director Joel Souza was injured during filming but has recovered.

A stood up rust is scheduled to go into production on April 20 in Montana, Deadline reported exclusively on March 16. That Rust 2.0 will star Baldwin, will be directed by Souza, and is being produced by Hutchin’s widower, Matthew Hutchins. Along with several rust Crew members and law enforcement say Matthew Hutchins is currently on the district attorney’s witness list for the two-week mini-trial that begins May 3 in Santa Fe.

Coming from an apparently already troubled group, Hutchins’ death led to Baldwin’s civil suit and countersuit rust Crew members in New Mexico and California. While a wrongful-death lawsuit against Matthew Hutchins was settled and dropped in October 2022, Halyna Hutchins’ parents and sisters, who live in Ukraine, took Baldwin and other producers to court in LA on February 9 for negligence.

With at least one civil case on hold for the New Mexico criminal case, the death of Halyna Hutchins will go to trial in the coming years, with Judge Mary Marlow Sommer deciding in May whether there is enough evidence to proceed with the criminal case . in the court.