RPJ Partner Helen D. (Heidi) Reavis Featured in Fox News Article Discussing the ‘Rust’ Trial Outcome and Legal Impacts

Last week, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer unexpectedly announced the decision to dismiss the serious criminal charges against Alec Baldwin.  The actor was initially charged in January 2023 with two counts of involuntary manslaughter after shooting and killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injuring Joel Souza on the set of ‘Rust’ in 2021.  (To learn more about the background of the case, see here.)  While those charges were later dropped, Baldwin was once again charged in January 2024 with involuntary manslaughter and has been preparing for trial since.

This past Friday, however, after a series of colossal blunderings on the part of law enforcement and the prosecution (including testing evidence to the point of damage as well as mis-filing other potentially key evidence, under the wrong case number and withheld from the defense), Judge Sommer dramatically dismissed the charges against Baldwin with prejudice, on the basis that the prosecution broke the cardinal rule and concealed evidence from the defense’s legal team.

The Baldwin trial thus concluded as a preeminent example of how not to prepare and bring a case, according to Ms. Reavis, as it was ultimately not the evidence that led to Baldwin’s acquittal but instead the plethora of avoidable errors made by the prosecution.  Ms. Reavis states: “[t]he myriad errors during the ‘Rust’ investigation and trial will be [production] material for years to come – and I mean for law books, law school classes, law enforcement training, and defense/prosecution orientation, on how cases are botched through unforced errors.”

She looks forward to seeing how the production industry also responds to the insights provided by the open window into the ‘Rust’ indie film production and the various film-set and personnel abuses that will likely be the subject of future legislation and government requirements to come.

Read more about what RPJ’s Heidi Reavis has to say about the case here.