Judge pre­sid­ing Alec Bald­win case deals major blow to pros­e­cu­tors

Actor Alec Bald­win received a legal win ahead of his tri­al, as the judge pre­sid­ing over the case ruled pros­e­cu­tors could not ref­er­ence his pro­duc­ing role.
Bald­win is fac­ing an invol­un­tary manslaugh­ter charge after he was involved in the 2021 on-set shoot­ing for the film Rust, which result­ed in the death of 42-year-old cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Haly­na Hutchins and the injury of direc­tor Joel Souza. On Mon­day, Judge Mary Mar­lowe Som­mer sided with the defense and ruled that evi­dence of Baldwin’s role as a pro­duc­er has no rela­tion to his charge of invol­un­tary manslaugh­ter.
“I’m hav­ing real dif­fi­cul­ty with the state’s posi­tion that they want to show that as a pro­duc­er he didn’t fol­low guide­lines and there­fore, as an actor, Mr. Bald­win did all these things wrong,” Som­mer said. “The pro­ba­tive val­ue is not sub­stan­tial­ly out­weighed by unfair prej­u­dice and con­fu­sion to jurors.”

In this image tak­en from video released by the San­ta Fe Coun­ty Sheriff’s Office, Alec Bald­win speaks with inves­ti­ga­tors fol­low­ing a fatal shoot­ing on a movie s …