The Rust Case Goes Off The Rails
The Judge dismissed the case on the grounds of prosecutorial misconduct.
Alec Baldwin is a free man today because of the hubris of Special Prosecutor Kari Morrisey.
The trial got off to a great start on Wednesday. Despite being told on Tuesday that the state could not bring up Baldwin’s role as the film’s producer, co-prosecutor Erlinda Campos Johnson handled opening statements. She laid out the case that the actor had been negligent in his handling of the firearm on the set of Rust. After opening statements, everything seemed to be running smoothly as the prosecution started rolling through their witness list.
Thursday morning brought the cross-examination of Crime Scene Technician Marissa Poppell. Poppell had been a key witness in the case against Hannah Guiterrez Reed earlier this year. She was a solid witness, and then Alec’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, got a hold of her, and this is where things started spiraling downhill. We learned that Poppell and Detective Hancock did not thoroughly search the PDQ Prop House for live ammo when they executed a search warrant 40 days after the death of Halyna. When shown a photo of the prop house with boxes piled high, Poppell admitted that they did not search through the massive stack of boxes because they didn’t have a ladder.
Then Spiro started questioning Poppell about a man who dropped off ammo at the Sheriff’s office during the HGR trial, saying it was the sister ammo to the round that killed Halyna. That ammo was bagged into evidence under a different case number and not disclosed to the Baldwin defense in any way. The man in question was revealed by prosecutor Morrisey to be Troy Teske, a good friend of HGR’s stepfather, Thell Reed. While on the stand in front of the jury, Poppell told Morrisey that the ammo Teske gave her did not match the Rust live rounds.