Alec Baldwin Just Scored A Big Victory In Rust Shooting Trial, Is He Going To Walk Scot-Free?
Special prosecutor Andrea Reeb has stepped down from the Alec Baldwin Rust trial.
Alec Baldwin has won another small victory in the Rust shooting trial, making it more likely that the actor will walk away scot-free. The special prosecutor on the case, Andrea Reeb, has resigned from her position claiming that she didn’t want her dual roles as the case’s prosecutor and as a New Mexico state legislator to “cloud” the issues. This comes after Baldwin already won a statute amendment that shaved five years off his maximum sentence, should the 30 Rock actor be found guilty.
Per Variety, Reeb’s decision to step away is yet another setback for the prosecution of Alec Baldwin and armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed. Both are facing trial after the Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was tragically shot and killed in an accident on set in October 2021. While Baldwin and Reed are both preparing for trial, David Halls, the first assistant director in charge of safety on set, was allowed to plead no contest to a misdemeanor and will not go to trial nor serve jail time.
Alec Baldwin could face up to 18 months in prison if he loses the trial, which is much less than the original minimum of five years the actor faced at the beginning of this case. Baldwin’s lawyers argued and won that the five-year sentencing enhancement that both defendants were being threatened with was a new law enacted after the incident on the Rust set, meaning the tragic incident didn’t apply.
When the prosecution dropped the five-year enhancement, it was a big win for Alec Baldwin. Now, special prosecutor Andrea Reeb stepping aside is another big win for his case. The Sante Fe district attorney first appointed Reeb to lead the prosecution last August, a few months before Reeb was elected as a Republican member of the state House of Representatives in November.
While there is no law against someone playing dual roles as legislator and prosecutor, Alec Baldwin’s lawyers saw this as an opportunity to gain some higher ground and aggressively began to argue that Reeb could not serve in both roles fairly. Although Reeb held back from voting in conflicting issues as a legislature, including refraining from voting on the state budget as it included $360,000 set aside for the Rust trial, the New Mexico representative finally did agree that there was a conflict in her holding both positions.
“After much reflection, I have made the difficult decision to step down as special prosecutor in the ‘Rust’ case,” Reeb said in an official statement. She continued that her reasoning behind her resignation was so that the prosecution could focus more on the case at hand rather than using their time to defend Reeb’s position in the case to Alec Baldwin’s lawyers.
With Reeb’s departure, the prosecution does not have a lot of time to replace her. A two-week preliminary trial is set for the beginning of May, and Alec Baldwin’s lawyers have been clear that they are not willing to delay the appointment to give the prosecution time to hire someone else.
Despite Alec Baldwin’s ongoing trial, Rust will resume filming this spring, moving production from New Mexico to Montana. Additionally, a documentary is being made about the tragic incident with Hutchins’ widower, Matthew Hutchins, enlisted as a producer.
