Alec Baldwin Case Lessons in Charles County, MD: Your Charges CAN Be Dismissed if Prosecutors Fail to Turn Over Exculpatory Evidence

In Maryland, if the police uncover evidence that tends to prove a criminal defendant innocent, the police have a legal duty to turn that evidence over to the criminal defense teams. This duty also applies to government prosecutors. That is, even if the evidence “hurts their case,” police and prosecutors MUST turn over that evidence to the criminal defense. This type of evidence is called exculpatory evidence. That is a type of evidence that is favorable to the criminal defendant in the sense of tending to prove innocence or tending to prove an excuse, justification, or some other criminal defense.

When law enforcement or prosecutors fail to turn over exculpatory evidence, this can be the basis for having charges dismissed and dismissed “with prejudice.” If charges are ever dismissed “with prejudice,” this means that the government is forever barred from bringing those charges again. Dismissed “with prejudice” has a similar effect to being acquitted and found not guilty.

To be honest, dismissal with prejudice is rare. The usual remedy for failure to turn over exculpatory evidence is a reversal of a conviction or declaration of a mistrial by the trial court judge. In both cases, the criminal defendant gets a new trial. However, dismissal with prejudice is possible. The recent Alec Baldwin case is an example.

As many know, Alec Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter charges were completely dismissed by the judge in his New Mexico criminal case because the government prosecutors failed to turn over exculpatory evidence.

Baldwin was charged with the death of Halyna Hutchins, who was fatally shot by Baldwin on the movie set of a yet-to-be-completed Western-genre film called “Rust.” Hutchins was a cinematographer for the film and was killed in 2021 when Baldwin fired a movie-prop revolver containing “live” rounds. Such guns used for movies are capable of firing standard ammunition but normally contain “blanks,” which, of course, do not discharge bullets.

The prosecution’s case depended on the circumstances surrounding the incident, including the fact that no scene was being acted out (which might have called for a gun to be fired), Hutchins was very much “off camera” and was far from where a scene would have been acted out, Baldwin was in the midst of an argument, he was brandishing the gun, and there was no reason for Baldwin to pull the trigger even assuming it contained blank rounds.

The exculpatory evidence at issue was a supplemental report related to the matching “live round” bullets that were in the same batch as the ammunition that killed Hutchins. The existence of the report concerning the other live rounds was not made known to the criminal defense attorneys until a couple of days before trial. The report indicated that the other bullets were not tested or even kept with the Baldwin evidence file. The bullets had been evidence in a different — but related — case but had not been transferred to the Baldwin evidence file. The report — and other information — raised serious questions about the origin of the matching bullets. They were not found by police investigators but were handed over by a “Good Samaritan” with complex motivations. This person and the matching bullets might have helped prove Baldwin innocent. In the end, the judge decided that the prosecutors withheld the evidence deliberately and that the court could not “fix” the damage done by the intentional misbehavior. As such, the court dismissed all charges with prejudice.

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This article has been provided by the Law Office of Robert Castro. For more information or questions, contact our office to speak to an experienced Maryland criminal defense lawyer at (301) 870-1200. We are Waldorf, MD, Criminal Defense lawyers. Our address is