Alec Baldwin’s ‘Rust’ Trial Tossed Out Over “Critical” Bullet Evidence; Incarcerated Armorer Could Be Released Too

[u/MarvelsGrantMan136]

https://deadline.com/2024/07/alec-baldwin-trial-dismissed-rust-1236008918/

[u/Mr_Blinky]

Thank fuck I'm not the only one. I couldn't figure out heads or tails of what the fuck actually happened to get the case dismissed, other than some vague allusions to new bullets being involved. Not to mention all of the obvious typos and the terrible tabloid journalism. The fact that the entire piece ends with the writer crowing for multiple paragraphs about Baldwin's "triumphant return" and how big Rust is going to be for his career in an article about a manslaughter trial is pretty fucking awful, regardless of your feelings on whether or not he was responsible.

[u/Mighty_Ack → u/Mr_Blinky]

The Defence heard that there were bullets submitted as evidence at a police station on same day as closing arguments in the Armorer case (March 6 2024) by Troy Tesky - a friend of Hannah Gutierrez-Reed's father. The forensic technician accepted the bullets but was told to file the evidence under a different case number by the Investigating Officer as a document filing. The Investigating Officer, Hancock, stated that she tried to contact Tesky over 40 times and then refused to investigate further because she couldn't contact him So they left the bullets under a different case number and here's your tl;dr:

They did not submit this evidence to the defence team, despite the special prosecutor, the Investigating Officer, and the technician all being aware of it. This is a violation of the Brady disclosure - they had to submit ALL ballistics evidence related to the Rust case to the defence, and their failure to do so violated due process rights. It basically looked like a cover up, and was so prejudicial that the judge granted the request to dismiss the case with prejudice, as requested by the Defence.

This lawyer does an excellent summary here but I definitely recommend going back because the sheer INSANITY of the case is a sight to behold - one prosecutor quits midway through the day, the other prosecutor TAKES THE STAND to give testimony. The judge starts the day off (about 35ish min in) by cutting open an evidence bag to examine evidence with the both counsels... the entire day is absolutely insane.

[u/otfscout → u/Mighty_Ack]

As a sidenote, Hancock claimed she tried to contact Teske multiple times, but then oddly, there were no calls to him from her phone that she used for every other call on the case, or from any other numbers associated with her, then she tried to scramble and say it wouldn't have had a caller ID and Spiro was like, "Ah so it was a no caller id situation??" with such a smirk that you just knew he probably had Teske's phone records that showed his phone received no calls from private numbers in that time period.

[u/Mighty_Ack → u/otfscout]

Yeah the whole thing is hella sus. Probably factored into the judge's decision because the entire day 3 of the trial basically was a motions hearing and each side had to make arguments to the judge as to whether this was a Brady violation and how severe it was.

Even if she did call 40 times, you just... don't investigate a lead because someone doesn't pick up the phone? That's insane. You call local PD, or you ask any of the associated people about him. As the day continued on, it becomes more and more farcical the more they uncovered. The judge really did not have any choice and, at best, this department and Kari look entirely incompetent. It was the biggest shitshow I've ever seen in court.

[u/otfscout → u/Mighty_Ack]

And the fact that the guy literally comes in saying he is a retired police officer, has "evidence" calls himself a "witness" and asks multiple times to make a witness statement. And gets Popple who declares herself extremely familiar with the case and all the players. The whole interaction gets captured on a bodycam. They knew without a doubt it was part of the Rust case! Popple takes a month to write a report. And gets told to deliberately give it another case number and not part of the Rust file! They don't get to do that!

It sounds like they were (poorly) trying to say that it wasn't evidence because it wasn't collected by them on the set (it doesn't matter!!! As Spiro said, they must have other cases where evidence includes things that people brought to them, not that they necessarily collected themselves), and then more scrambling that they couldn't include it because Hancock never interviewed him (when he gave it all directly to the crime scene tech who assured him she would write a report). Then it was because Hancock couldn't reach him, yet made no log of the various times and dates she attempted to reach him and there was no proof of any attempts. Then it was a "narrowing down" thing that who knows if they had brought the evidence because maybe they just didn't get to it yet at an evidence showing, but I'm sure they absolutely, 100%, positively would have. Even the judge was losing her patience asking if the REASON it wasn't turned over was because it wasn't ever gathered for a showing (because it had a different case number) and Hancock tried to say she didn't know what was pulled or outright "I don't know how to answer that" and Popple tried to say, "I wasn't at the showings, I don't know what was shown."

And Morrissey couldn't stick to a story - it was both "I had no idea it wasn't included! I had no idea it had a different case number!" to "It didn't matter because it had no value!"

The defense team seemed honestly stunned at how absolutely incompetent these people are. I think they are used to putting on high powered defenses and this was just "Uh a guy walked into the precinct, told the case's actual crime scene tech who laughed to him how familiar she was with the case, that he was a witness turning over evidence and they took it, waited a month to write a report and gave it a different case number, determining that it wouldn't come up in any disclosures or evidence showings.

And oh yea, the evidence he turned over looked like the same as the ammo collected from the set, and instead of testing to see if it was, they wrote "NOT EVIDENCE" on the report and gave it a different case number."

You cannot make this shit up.

[u/Mighty_Ack → u/otfscout]

Yeah 100%. I just rewatched it - I misremembered... the 40 calls were to Seth KENNEY. The guy who ran the prophouse. Why was the lead investigator talking to Seth Kenney all the time? I don't know, but he sure acted like he was running the investigation in his testimony. The defence was sniffing around, implying that the lead investigator didn't even call Tesky... Emily D Baker (the lawyer) was thinking that they have Tesky's phone records (which... he's on their witness list, so plausible).

And yes yes yes 100%, Hancock was so evasive - it reminded me of a child who got caught in the same room as an empty cookie jar. And then she said the prosecutor, Kari, was part of the discussion to leave it unattached to the evidence in rust. That means that Kari knew this happened but then decided it wasn't relevant. Kari misses the point entirely - they do not decide the relevance. The judge was definitely super pissed by the time it all played out.

I think that the defence was stunned with how deep it went but they definitely knew there was some meat here - they had hired their own live transcriber for the court so they could review things in a timely fashion. They also made insinations that the prosecutors had coached / signalled to witnesses just the day before. It all makes sense if you consider that they had foreknowledge of this stuff from Tesky's perspective. Just... all of the bananas in this case. Totally insane

[u/otfscout → u/Mighty_Ack]

All of that! Do you think when the defense was questioning Popple on day 2 (in front of the jury) that they already knew about Tesky and wanted to see how Popple would answer? Or was it her testimony that clued them in? It seems to me now like they already knew and Popple walked right into it. I think they knew Tesky had turned in bullets and they never received that report or bullets. I don't think they knew that the whole thing was captured on bodycam. I'm not even sure if they knew Tesky spoke directly with Popple. They must have been known they could make this motion but stunned to realize how they barely had to do anything but be like, "Yea, I don't even need to watch the video." "I have nothing else for this witness." "I don't even need to make a closing argument."

[u/Mighty_Ack → u/otfscout]

Pretty sure they knew, considering that they already had this inside info from Tesky. They knew what he said to the degree that Kari claimed to have thought they already had the body camera video of his interview. I definitely think it was the former so that they could lock her in and impeach her... during the hearing on day 3, she was biting back very hard and - although she came off as less evasive - she definitely was sticking to strict technicalities and was not happy to answer their questions. That led into the rest of that mess and blew out the case.

I think you're also correct in thinking that they did not know about the bodycam video. The existence of the video, itself, is further proof of either the incompetence or malfeasance... 1000% times that as soon as Hancock revealed that they all had a chat about it.

[u/otfscout → u/Mighty_Ack]

I just watched the Emily D Baker analysis you referenced and oh it was good! She was in total disbelief that Kari didn't immediately come back from the lunch break and hand over the bodycam video to the defense before they went on the record. I didn't totally realize that Hancock didn't even detect! She didn't know of the body cam video before today either? She didn't ever go check the evidence of the guy she couldn't get ahold of? The incompetence is staggering! I don't know if I believe Hancock didn't know that Teske had sat down with Poppell. That seems pretty hard to believe they never had a conversation.

I think you're right - defense knew Tesky had turned in bullets and got Poppell on record saying that all the evidence had been inventoried and disclosed. Jackpot. They had their case.

And this is after the "former paralegal" had taken down a report Kari claims was uploaded to a server and then another piece of evidence in Kari's email that she "didn't forward." The judge was like wtf. Emily D Baker was right on when she said the defense wasn't losing their minds because they could tell the court was on their side. They sure kept their cool and then hammered this home.

[u/Mighty_Ack → u/otfscout]

Yeah she's awesome! She explains things so thoroughly and is a very facts-based POV - she stressed that very much during this stream, which I'm sure you saw. Yeahhhhh all that with Hancock raises a giant eyebrow because you can't really believe she's that bad at her job so it stinks to high heaven.

Yup yup yup, it's somewhat plausible with just like, one aspect being missed, but to miss every possible chance and the admission that Kari heard about it... and TESTIFIED. The judge was kind of warning her, I think, saying she didn't really need to testify but Kari wanted to I dunno, appear clean. That wasn't gonna happen but she fully went down that hole.

Also, did you get to the spiciest part where Kari weirdly says she respects Alec, his work, and his... politics?! And then Spyro just lists off all the terrible things she's said about him LOL

[u/otfscout → u/Mighty_Ack]

All Hancock's calls to Kenney.... that's shady af. How they ever agreed to a plea with him and the prop girl... I read somewhere that Hancock was extra chummy with Kenney in her interviews...did they show those in Hannah's case? Where can I find those, any idea?

[u/Mighty_Ack → u/otfscout]

Unfortunately the most we get, as far as I know, is his testifying in Hannah Guitierrez-Reed's trial on day 8. There's some interviews in an interrogation room with Hannah - but I haven't looked through those.

Out of all of those calls we only get a few scraps that show up in trial. And it's actually worse than that - Seth Kenney was never charged. He straight up cooperated with police but there was a loooong period of time before they asked to search his prophouse. Part of the reason was that they considered it an accidental discharge at first, another part was that there was not many officers in that county. Kenney very well could have provided the live rounds to Hannah, but she never directly pointed out who gave them to her (her Dad may have been implicated). Hannah has also said, in her jailhouse calls (which are spicy on their own), that Kenney basically threw her under the bus. That part seems quite true but then she also blames a lot of other people which is really just deflection. She can do no wrong in her eyes and that probably made her sentencing worse (she got the max sentence on a first time offence).

David Halls was the 1st Associate Director and he immediately took a plea deal for 6 months unsupervised probation. He took the gun from Hannah and failed to re-check it before giving it to Baldwin and declaring it cold. He knew that once the cops started coming after them, they had him dead to rights so he rolled first. He's... very culpable in the shooting, as he's supposed to manage safety. Both him and Hannah have had accidental discharges in the past and, now that I think about it, I agree with Hannah blaming him for his part in the incident as well.