The trial of Alec Baldwin took a dramatic turn on Friday when a manila envelope of previously unexamined evidence was brought into the courtroom, prompting the judge to put on blue latex gloves, cut it open with a pair of scissors and then get down from the bench to examine ammunition in the well of the courtroom.
It was an unusual scene in a case that has seen dramatic twists and turns for more than two years.
Lawyers for Mr. Baldwin, who is on trial for involuntary manslaughter for his role in the fatal shooting of the cinematographer on the set of the film “Rust,” called for the case to be dismissed on Friday, accusing the prosecution of hiding evidence that could help explain how live ammunition wound up on a film set where it was supposed to be banned.
“They buried it,” Luke Nikas, a lawyer for Mr. Baldwin, said in court, accusing the prosecution of failing to disclose that it was given a batch of rounds said to be connected to the case when the defense asked to review all the ballistic evidence. “They put it under a different case with a different number.”
The accusation was made during a tense hearing at the Santa Fe County District Courthouse, which prompted Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer to get down from the bench to examine the ammunition as a crime scene technician and lawyers for the defense and the prosecution looked on. She then sent the jury home for the weekend as she considers the issue.
The lead prosecutor in the case, Kari T. Morrissey, has blamed the movie’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, for bringing live rounds onto the set, which the armorer denied. Ms. Gutierrez-Reed was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for loading the live round into the gun that Mr. Baldwin was rehearsing with on Oct. 21, 2021 when it fired, killing the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins. She is serving 18 months in prison.
The ammunition examined in court on Friday came from a man named Troy Teske, a friend of Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s stepfather, Thell Reed, who is a well-known Hollywood armorer.
He first surfaced in the case on Thursday, as Mr. Baldwin’s defense questioned a crime scene technician. It emerged that Mr. Teske, a retired police officer, had gone to the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office after the conviction of Ms. Gutierrez-Reed and handed over some ammunition that he believed was related to the case.
The crime scene technician, Marissa Poppell, testified that she had spoken to Mr. Teske and saved the ammunition, but she put it under a different case number than the “Rust” case.
The prosecutor, Ms. Morrissey, said in court that, after viewing a photo provided by Mr. Teske, she had considered the ammunition not relevant to the “Rust” investigation because it did not look similar to the live rounds that were collected on the movie set. “This has no evidentiary value whatsoever,” she said in court.
But when the judge asked to see the ammunition, and it was brought into court, it became clear that at least one round did resemble the ammunition collected on the “Rust” set.
When Judge Marlowe Sommer asked if any rounds were similar to what was collected on the set, Ms. Poppell acknowledged that at least one had a particular kind of casing and primer “similar to what was collected on set.”
As the rounds were examined, Mr. Baldwin watched intently, sometimes taking notes on a legal pad.
The prosecutor said she had not seen all the ammunition provided by Mr. Teske in person or the report that Ms. Poppell wrote about it. “I’ve never seen these until this morning,” she said.
Mr. Baldwin’s lawyers have been fighting the case at every turn, and the question of where the live rounds came from and how law enforcement carried out its investigation has been central to their defense.
Judge Marlowe Sommer has not yet ruled on how to deal with the dispute, which poses a legal problem because the state is required to turn over key evidence like this to the defense.
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