Alec Baldwin’s lawsuit against New Mexico prosecutors over ‘malicious’ Rust shooting prosecution is THROWN OUT

Alec Baldwin’s lawsuit against New Mexico prosecutors who put him on trial for the deadly shooting on the set of his Western film Rust has been dismissed by a judge.

Documents obtained by Daily Mail indicate that the case was thrown out because there had been no progress on it in months.

According to the judge overseeing the case, there had been ‘no significant action has been taken in 180 or more days in connection to any and all pending claims.’

Daily Mail has contacted Baldwin’s representative for comment but hasn’t yet received a response.

Baldwin filed his lawsuit against prosecutors in January, but filings from either side in the case dried up shortly afterward. 

First Judicial District Chief Judge Bryan Biedscheid dismissed the case without prejudice, meaning that Baldwin still has the option to refile the lawsuit within 30 days.

However, he may not feel the need to refile the lawsuit, as sources told TMZ on Wednesday that the actor is currently negotiating with prosecutors for a potential settlement.

In his suit, Baldwin accused the prosecutors of malicious prosecution and civil rights violations. 

He claimed that the prosecution defamed him and alleged that prosecutors and investigators intentionally mishandled evidence while investigating the on-set shooting.

On October 21, 2021, a revolver used as a prop that Baldwin was holding discharged on the set of Rust, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injuring the film’s director, Joel Souza. Baldwin said the deadly incident was an accident and claimed not to have pulled the trigger. 

Baldwin was subsequently charged with involuntary manslaughter in January 2023 in response to the death of Hutchins. 

The charges were dropped in April of that year, only for him to be indicted again in January 2024 for involuntary manslaughter.

Three days after the July 9, 2024, start of his trial, the judge overseeing it dismissed the charges against him with prejudice after determining that prosecutors had ‘shown signs of scorching prejudice’ by failing to turn over evidence of bullets discovered during the investigation that could have potentially been exculpatory.

‘Defendants, while acting under the color of law, conspired to procure a groundless indictment against Baldwin and to maliciously bring about or advance Baldwin’s trial and conviction, thus violating Baldwin’s constitutional rights by their improper use of the criminal process,’ the suit claimed.

‘Defendants sought at every turn to scapegoat Baldwin for the acts and omissions of others, regardless of the evidence or the law.’

The lawsuit named Special Prosecutor Kari Morrissey, Santa Fe District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies and investigators from the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office as defendants. 

It came just weeks after the district attorney’s office announced it would not pursue an appeal of a court’s decision to dismiss the involuntary manslaughter charge against Baldwin.

Morrissey withdrew her appeal in December of a decision to dismiss the charge against Baldwin in Hutchins’ death.

‘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,’ Baldwin’s defense attorneys Luke Nikas and Alex Spiro said at the time. ‘The rule of law remains intact in New Mexico.’

The decision to drop the appeal solidified the decision by Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer halfway through trial to dismiss the case on allegations that police and prosecutors withheld evidence from the defense.

Prosecutors had said they deemed ammunition that was brought into the Santa Fe County sheriff’s office in March 2024 unrelated and unimportant to the case, but Baldwin’s defense team claimed in court that investigators ‘buried’ the evidence.

Judge Sommer said at the time that the dismissal was ‘the only warranted remedy’ amid the legal issues and that there was ‘no way for the court to right this wrong.’

‘The late discovery of this evidence has impacted the fundamental fairness of the proceedings,’ the judge said.

The district attorney’s office said that under state law the New Mexico attorney general would have carried forward the appeal but ‘did not intend to exhaustively pursue the appeal on behalf of the prosecution.’

‘As a result, the State’s efforts to continue to litigate the case in a fair and comprehensive manner have been met with multiple barriers that have compromised its ability to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law,’ local prosecutors said.

Baldwin, the lead actor and co-producer for Rust, was pointing a gun at Hutchins during a rehearsal on set when the revolver went off, killing Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza. 

Baldwin has said he pulled back the hammer — but not the trigger — and the revolver fired.

After the case was thrown out, Baldwin regained some of his position in Hollywood.

‘I do believe that by the communications I’ve had lately, that things are coming back my way to work, and I’m happy for that because I’ve got seven kids,’ he said in a candid conversation on David Duchovny’s podcast Fail Better.

‘But I’ve also enjoyed the fact that there’s so much of this case that is not known, because we didn’t have a full trial. The judge canceled the case. She ruled that it was dismissed with prejudice, which I’m very grateful for because it was, I think, a very, very informed decision on her part,’ he said. 

‘But if I’d gone all the way and gotten a verdict, that’s a little bit better because a bunch of people in a jury had considered the facts and we would’ve presented so much more. All that doesn’t get presented because the case is over.’

A judge, however, had previously sentenced Rust’s weapons supervisor Hannah Gutierrez-Reed to the maximum of one-and-a-half years at a state penitentiary on an involuntary manslaughter conviction in Hutchins’ death.

Prosecutors blamed Gutierrez-Reed for unwittingly bringing live ammunition onto the set of Rust, where it was expressly prohibited, and for failing to follow basic gun-safety protocols.

Meanwhile, assistant director and safety coordinator David Halls pleaded no contest to the negligent use of a deadly weapon and was sentenced to six months of unsupervised probation. A no contest plea isn’t an admission of guilt but is treated as such for sentencing purposes.

Several civil lawsuits have also been brought against Baldwin and Rust producers, including a complaint by Hutchins’ parents and sister.