The second day of Alec Baldwin’s trial went deep into the origins of a vintage Colt .45 revolver and the question of how live bullets got to the set of “Rust.”
Baldwin is accused of involuntary manslaughter in the October 2021 shooting of Halyna Hutchins, the film’s cinematographer. Prosecutors maintain that he negligently fired the weapon while preparing for a scene.
Baldwin has denied pulling the trigger. His lawyers argue that his gun handling is a distraction from the central question of how six live bullets — including the fatal one — got to set.
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Alessandro Pietta, the gun’s manufacturer, came from Italy to testify about his company’s quality control measures. Under questioning from prosecutor Erlinda Johnson, he testified that the gun would not fire without a pull of the trigger.
“You want to release the hammer, you have to pull the trigger,” Pietta said, in accented English.
The gun was imported from Italy in 2017, and displayed at industry trade shows for several years before being sold to Seth Kenney, the man who supplied guns and dummy ammunition to “Rust.”
Baldwin’s defense team used its cross-examination of a crime scene technician to argue that investigators did not fully pursue whether Kenney also accidentally supplied the live bullets. The prosecution has long maintained that there is no evidence that the bullets came from him.
The defense has argued that after failing to track down the source of the bullets, investigators turned their attention to prosecuting Baldwin instead.
Thursday’s testimony became convoluted at times, as the lawyers went through photos of live and dummy rounds and asked jurors to pay attention to minute differences in size, shape and coloring.
The testimony did contain at least one new revelation.
Alex Spiro, the lead defense lawyer, asked technician Marissa Poppell about a “Good Samaritan” who recently came forward with rounds that he claimed matched the fatal bullet. The individual, former police officer Troy Teske, turned in the bullets to the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office shortly after the trial of armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed in March.
Spiro said that Teske had told investigators they were “duped” by Kenney. He alleged that investigators had failed to turn over this key information to the defense.
“You buried it,” Spiro said to the technician.
Poppell said that she had documented the disclosure and that it was not her job to provide discovery to the defense. On redirect, prosecutor Kari Morrissey countered that the bullets were not a match for the fatal round.
Jason Bowles, Gutierrez Reed’s lawyer, said in an email that the bullets do in fact match, and that they do substantiate a link between Kenney and the live rounds.
“This is what I had been trying to tell the state, screaming it for years now,” Bowles said. “Shocking these weren’t tested nor even submitted into ‘Rust’ case evidence.”
Spiro suggested that Poppell and other investigators had waited too long — more than a month — to search Kenney’s business, and had then conducted a relatively cursory search.
“Isn’t the truth that you were just trying to get this over with, so prosecutors could focus on Alec Baldwin?” Spiro asked.
“No,” Poppell replied.
Bowles also criticized investigators for a half-hearted investigation into the source of the bullets during the Gutierrez Reed trial. The prosecution argued in that case that Gutierrez Reed brought the live rounds to set.
During the cross-examination, Spiro also showed jurors a photo of Hutchins’ copy of the film’s script, which was found on the floor of the church where she was shot.
One line of the script — “Rust’s Colt COCKED quietly now” — indicated that Baldwin’s character was supposed to cock his gun during the scene they were filming. A shot list also included “Macro on hammer as thumb cocks it.”
The prosecution argued in its opening statement that Baldwin went “off script” during the fatal incident. Spiro appeared to be making the point that Baldwin was cocking the hammer as the script required.
