Alec Baldwin Sues New Mexico Prosecutors Over Dismissed ‘Rust’ Case

Alec Baldwin filed a lawsuit on Thursday accusing New Mexico prosecutors and law enforcement officials of waging a “malicious prosecution” against him after the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the “Rust” film set.

Their involuntary manslaughter case against Mr. Baldwin in the shooting death of the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, came to a dramatic end in July during his trial in Santa Fe, N.M. The judge found that the state had withheld evidence from the defense, and dismissed the case without the potential for it to be retried.

“There is no way for the court to right this wrong,” the judge, Mary Marlowe Sommer, said in dismissing the case, as Mr. Baldwin wept in the courtroom.

Mr. Baldwin’s lawsuit, filed in the First Judicial District Court of New Mexico, accuses prosecutors of violating his constitutional rights through “improper use of the criminal process.” His lawyers accused the prosecutors of a series of violations, claiming that they had failed to disclose evidence to the defense on several occasions, had pursued the case to promote their “personal agendas or professional ambitions” and had failed to pursue all lines of the inquiry as they tried to “manufacture” a case against Mr. Baldwin.

“Defendants must now be held accountable for their malicious and unlawful pursuit of Baldwin,” the suit says. “Although no verdict in this civil case can undo the trauma the state’s threat of conviction and incarceration has inflicted, Alec Baldwin has filed this action to hold defendants responsible for their appalling violations of the laws that governed their work.”

In response to the lawsuit, Kari T. Morrissey, a special prosecutor who oversaw the trial, said in a statement: “In October 2023 the prosecution team became aware that Mr. Baldwin intended to file a retaliatory civil lawsuit. We look forward to our day in court.”

Other prosecutors named in the lawsuit who pursued the case at various stages did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The prosecution has long argued that criminal charges against Mr. Baldwin were merited, saying he behaved recklessly on the set in a way that caused Ms. Hutchins’s death.

“This has always been about seeking justice for Halyna Hutchins,” Ms. Morrissey said in a statement last month.

Mr. Baldwin was positioning an old-fashioned revolver for the camera on Oct. 21, 2021, when the shooting occurred. Mr. Baldwin had been told that the gun was “cold,” meaning it was not supposed to contain any live ammunition. But as he practiced drawing the gun it discharged a live bullet, killing Ms. Hutchins and injuring the movie’s director, Joel Souza.

Mr. Baldwin has denied responsibility since the beginning, noting that there should not have been any live ammunition on the set and asserting that he did not pull the trigger before the antique-style revolver went off. The armorer who loaded the live ammunition into the gun that day, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and is serving an 18-month prison sentence.

Mr. Baldwin’s lawsuit — which was filed by his lawyers Luke Nikas and Alex Spiro — takes issue with nearly every turn of the winding criminal case against him, including how it was initially handled by a prosecution team led by Mary Carmack-Altwies, the local district attorney.

Ms. Carmack-Altwies’s team originally said Mr. Baldwin faced a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison if convicted of one version of the manslaughter charge, and then downgraded that to an 18-month maximum sentence after Mr. Baldwin’s lawyers pointed out that they had incorrectly charged him under a law that was not passed until months after the fatal shooting.

The lawsuit noted that a special prosecutor who was initially tapped to handle the case, Andrea Reeb, had suggested that the case could help her campaign for the State Legislature. “I’d at least like to get out there that I am assisting you … as it might help in my campaign lol,” she wrote in an email to Ms. Carmack-Altwies.

Ms. Reeb, who has said she was joking in the email, stepped down from the case after lawyers for Mr. Baldwin argued that her simultaneous work for two branches of state government — serving as a lawmaker and a prosecutor — violated New Mexico’s Constitution.

Ms. Carmack-Altwies, Ms. Reeb and Ms. Morrissey are all named as defendants in the actor’s suit, as are officials in the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office, which handled the initial investigation into the shooting, and the Board of County Commissioners. For the suit to proceed, Mr. Baldwin’s lawyers will have to convince the court that the defendants are not protected by state law that establishes immunity for public officials who are sued based on conduct within the scope of their jobs.

Representatives for the sheriff’s office and Santa Fe County did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In taking aim at the “Rust” prosecution, Mr. Baldwin’s lawyers questioned their motivations for pursuing the case against him. They highlighted an NBC News report from 2023 that reported “the special prosecutors have had discussions in which they said they hope the trial will ‘humble’ Baldwin,” citing a “source familiar with the case.”

Ms. Morrissey wrote in court papers in 2023 that the case against Mr. Baldwin was not being pursued because of his “impressive level of arrogance or to teach him a lesson” but, rather, because of a “full and detailed investigation.”

When Ms. Morrissey revived the case she argued that Mr. Baldwin had failed to observe industry safety protocols around guns and that he should have checked to make sure Ms. Gutierrez-Reed had loaded the revolver with dummy rounds, facsimiles that are used to resemble real ammunition in films. She has said that forensic evidence undercuts Mr. Baldwin’s claim that he did not pull the trigger.

“Mr. Baldwin had a duty to confirm that only inert ammunition had been placed in the gun before pointing it at person, cocking it and pulling the trigger as a gun handler in the State of New Mexico subject to New Mexico laws,” Ms. Morrissey wrote in court papers ahead of the trial.

SAG-AFTRA, the union which represents actors, disputed that, saying that firearms professionals, not actors, are responsible for checking guns on sets.

Ms. Morrissey has denied that the excluded evidence that halted the trial — a tranche of ammunition delivered to local law enforcement in March — was intentionally withheld from Mr. Baldwin’s lawyers. She initially signaled her intention to appeal the judge’s decision to throw out the case, but she withdrew the appeal last month after the New Mexico attorney general’s office, which oversees criminal appeals, declined to back the effort.

Mr. Baldwin’s suit claims that he deserves monetary damages stemming from “legal expenses, loss of income, severe emotional distress, mental anguish and embarrassment.”

Although Mr. Baldwin is no longer under criminal prosecution for the shooting, he still faces several lawsuits, including from Ms. Hutchins’s relatives and “Rust” crew members.