Hutchins

Four years after the “Rust” movie shooting, New Mexico officials have moved Alec Baldwin’s lawsuit alleging malicious prosecution to federal court.

This week’s filing is the latest twist in the long legal saga after the October 2021 on-set death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

Baldwin, the 67-year-old star and a producer of the western film, had been facing a felony involuntary manslaughter charge for his role in Hutchins’ accidental shooting. But the judge overseeing Baldwin’s case abruptly dismissed the charge against him during his July 2024 trial after concluding that prosecutors withheld evidence that may have been helpful to his legal team.

Six months later, Baldwin sued New Mexico’s district attorney and special prosecutors, asserting malicious prosecution. The actor claimed he had been made a celebrity scapegoat because of the intense media pressure on local authorities to solve the high-profile case.

His lawsuit targeted New Mexico special prosecutor Kari T. Morrissey, 1st Judicial Dist. Atty. Mary Carmack-Altwies and Santa Fe County sheriff’s deputies, who led the investigation into Hutchins’ death.

The defendants have denied Baldwin’s allegations.

Baldwin’s wrongful prosecution suit was first filed in New Mexico court in Santa Fe.

On Tuesday, the defendants, including Morrissey, exercised their legal right to shift the case to federal court. The decision was made, in part, because “Mr. Baldwin brought federal civil rights claims in his lawsuit,” said Albuquerque attorney Luis Robles, who represents the defendants.

In addition, Baldwin does not live in New Mexico, where the case was filed.

Baldwin could object to the move and petition for it to be brought back to state court. On Wednesday, his team was not immediately available for comment.

A New Mexico judge had dismissed Baldwin’s malicious prosecution claims in July, citing 90 days of inactivity in the case. Baldwin’s legal team petitioned to get the case reinstated and the judge agreed to the request.

That prompted the defendants’ move to shift the case to the higher court.

During his Santa Fe trial last year, Baldwin’s lawyers had sought to turn the focus away from whether Baldwin pulled his gun’s trigger in the accidental shooting to where the lethal bullet came from.

Baldwin’s attorneys repeatedly accused law enforcement officers and prosecutors of bungling the case, including by allegedly hiding potential evidence — a batch of bullets that they said may have been related to the one that killed Hutchins.

A New Mexico judge has dismissed Alec Baldwin’s lawsuit alleging that he was maliciously prosecuted — one year after the actor-producer was cleared of a criminal charge in the “Rust” shooting death of the film’s cinematographer.

Baldwin alleged in a January lawsuit that he was the victim of overzealous New Mexico prosecutors and law enforcement. Baldwin claimed he had become the state’s celebrity scapegoat for the accidental on-set shooting of director of photography Halyna Hutchins.

The lawsuit came six months after a judge dismissed the involuntary manslaughter charge that Baldwin had been facing.

Former New Mexico 1st Judicial District Court Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer ended Baldwin’s trial last July after learning prosecutors withheld potential evidence from Baldwin’s legal team.

Baldwin’s subsequent suit targeted special prosecutor Kari T. Morrissey, 1st Judicial Dist. Atty. Mary Carmack-Altwies, Santa Fe County sheriff’s deputies and Santa Fe County Commissioners.

The defendants were “blinded by their desire to convict Alec Baldwin for all the wrong reasons, and at any cost,” his lawsuit claimed.

On Tuesday, a different judge dismissed Baldwin’s claims against the state, citing a lack of activity in the case.

Third Judicial Dist. Judge Casey B. Fitch wrote that it had been six months since any “significant action” had been filed in Baldwin’s case. Fitch gave the lawyers 30 days to file a motion to keep the lawsuit moving.

The ruling comes as legal proceedings in the “Rust” shooting saga are winding down.

In May, weapons handler Hannah Gutierrez was freed from prison after serving 14 months for her felony conviction of involuntary manslaughter in Hutchins’ October 2021 death on the New Mexico film set.

Baldwin’s case was dismissed a year ago by a Marlowe Sommer, who has since retired, on what was supposed to be the third day of the actor’s high-profile trial.

Instead, his defense attorneys raised serious questions over how New Mexico law enforcement officers and prosecutors handled evidence as they mounted their prosecution.

Baldwin’s attorneys accused the state of misconduct, pointing to a batch of unexamined bullets that a potential witness turned over to sheriff’s investigators in March 2024. Marlowe Sommer appeared furious over the handling of the evidence, which was not given to the defense, and dismissed the single charge against Baldwin.

Earlier this year, when Baldwin’s suit was filed, Morrissey said prosecutors had long been aware of Baldwin’s plans to sue New Mexico. She added: “We look forward to our day in court.”

Hannah Gutierrez, the weapons handler in the ill-fated Alec Baldwin western movie “Rust,” has been released from prison after serving 14 months for her conviction last year of involuntary manslaughter.

Gutierrez was released Friday from a New Mexico women’s prison after completing her sentence in the accidental shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in October 2021.

Gutierrez was one of three people charged in Hutchins’ death on the movie set south of Santa Fe, N.M., but the only one who received a felony conviction. A jury found her guilty of involuntary manslaughter in Hutchins’ death following a dramatic two-week trial last year in Santa Fe.

New Mexico prosecutors faulted the Arizona woman for reckless handling of firearms and ammunition in violation of gun safety rules.

The special prosecutor also argued that Gutierrez had unwittingly brought the live bullets with her to the popular western film location, Bonanza Creek Ranch, and mingled them with inert “dummy” bullets used on film sets.

Gutierrez has denied that allegation. There was no conclusive evidence presented about the origins of the live bullets.

Actor Alec Baldwin during his 2024 trial in Santa Fe for his role in the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

(Ramsay de Give / Associated Press)

Baldwin, who pointed the gun at Hutchins during a rehearsal, also was charged. He pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter for the shooting that killed the 42-year-old cinematographer, a rising star in the industry, and wounded the film’s director, Joel Souza.

The New Mexico judge overseeing the “Rust” criminal prosecutions, New Mexico 1st Judicial District Court Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer, dismissed the charge against Baldwin three days into his high-profile trial last July.

Marlowe Sommer found the prosecutor and Santa Fe County sheriff’s deputies had concealed evidence from Baldwin’s legal team, which the judge said prejudiced the case against Baldwin. At the time, the actor-producer’s team was exploring whether prosecutors and sheriff’s deputies botched the investigation into how the bullets made their way onto the set.

Assistant director David Halls was also charged in the shooting.

Halls pleaded no contest to negligent use of a deadly weapon and received a suspended six-month sentence, which ended in October 2023. Halls, who has since retired from the industry, agreed to pay a $500 fine, participate in a firearms safety class, refrain from taking drugs or alcohol and complete 24 hours of community service.

Gutierrez had received the maximum sentence for her role.

She was released on parole. She also is being supervised under terms of probation after pleading guilty to a separate charge of unlawfully carrying a gun into a Santa Fe bar that prohibited firearms a few days before the fatal shooting, according to the Associated Press.

Terms of her parole include mental health assessments and a ban on firearms possession.

Gutierrez, through her attorney, declined an interview request Sunday.

“When I took on ‘Rust,’ I was young and I was naive but I took my job as seriously as I knew how to,” Gutierrez told the judge during her April 2024 sentencing hearing.

Marlowe Sommer, who also presided over the armorer’s case, gave Gutierrez the maximum sentence, saying: “You were the armorer, the one that stood between a safe weapon and a weapon that could kill someone. .. You alone turned a safe weapon into a lethal weapon.”

With Gutierrez’s release, the criminal phase of the “Rust” saga has concluded.

Several civil lawsuits against Baldwin and the producers, including from Hutchins’ family members, remain unresolved.

Baldwin and other actors and crew members finished filming in Montana, 18 months after the fatal shooting in New Mexico. The movie was finally released in the U.S. this month on just a handful of screens.

The October 2021 shooting shined a harsh light on film set safety, particularly on low-budget productions.

“Rust” was racked with problems, including allegations of safety rules and hiring inexperienced crew members such as Gutierrez. “Rust” was just her second job as head armorer. She also was tasked with the job of prop assistant.

Hours before the fatal shooting, “Rust” camera crew members had walked off the job to protest safety concerns and a lack of housing near the film’s set. Crew members complained about earlier accidental gun discharges.

Gutierrez is the stepdaughter of well-known Hollywood armorer Thell Reed.

Ideally, we like to watch movies in a state of willful ignorance regarding their making, even if the whole machinery of selling and promoting a movie seems to defy that. But taking in the western “Rust” is a different matter. It’s the film on which up-and-coming cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was accidentally killed by a live round in a prop gun meant to hold blanks, discharged during a rehearsal by its star, Alec Baldwin. Writer-director Josh Souza was also wounded by the bullet.

That terrible and avoidable incident is a context that no movie should have to bear, even if the thematic matter of “Rust” — violence’s aftermath, atonement’s hard road and, yes, loaded guns in the wrong hands — makes this cursed production’s release, three and a half years after Hutchins’ death, feel more like a solemn performance at a wake than a work to be accepted on its own terms.

Anybody who might have assumed that “Rust” was some fly-by-night exploitation flick should know that its bones are very much that of a moody indie with a heart and a conscience. Death and tragedy are through lines meant to haunt a viewer. Justice is sought after, but is also portrayed as inadequate and hardly the last word. Guns are plentiful but for the most part, their unholstering and firing carries proper weight. In fact, Clint Eastwood’s masterpiece of reckoning “Unforgiven” feels like a tonal lodestar to “Rust,” itself far from a glib, flashy shoot-em-up.

Before Baldwin even appears as a grizzled outlaw with a mission of mercy, “Rust” sets itself up — uncannily, it must be said — as a woeful story about an unintended shooting death. When trying to scare off a wolf, orphaned Wyoming farm boy Lucas (Patrick Scott McDermott) mistakenly kills a local rancher with his family’s prized Henry rifle, a weapon we can tell he’s been reluctant to use. He’s arrested, thrown in jail, then sentenced to the gallows.

Bloody escape comes in the form of murdering thief Harland Rust (Baldwin), the grandfather Lucas never knew he had. Their destination is Mexico, but they’ve got pursuers in the form of a posse led by a steadfast, morosely philosophical U.S. Marshal played by a solid Josh Hopkins and, separately, a creepy Bible-quoting bounty hunter (Travis Fimmel, a tad overcooked).

Frontier characters with colorful language come and go in spurts of saloon musing and fireside dialogue. “Rust” talks a good game about the brutality and despair that are readily called up when living is hard. But the central relationship between Baldwin’s veteran killer and McDermott’s scarred innocent never quite gels into meaningful cross-generational intimacy, and the chase around them feels meandering. In its well-worn trail of hunter and hunted, damned and doomed, “Rust” struggles to warrant its two-hours-plus running time. (If only the storytelling economy of Anthony Mann or Budd Boetticher were other genre inspirations.)

“A man makes his choices,” Baldwin’s crusty, guilt-ridden drifter says to his grandkid at one point. It bears mentioning that “Rust,” a movie director Souza went on to agonizingly complete at Hutchins’ family’s request, stands as a lasting testament to her obvious talent. (Bianca Cline completed the cinematography when the production resumed filming, and the film is dedicated to Hutchins.)

There’s an elegant severity to the natural elements that share the frame with the movie’s characters, manifested in silhouettes against vast cloudy skies, delicate snowfalls, shafts of light in dark interiors and crisp air filled with smoke and dust. A testament to lives cut short, “Rust” is beautifully filmed and all the sadder for it.