Guilty pleasures

By NewsPress Now

Prosecutor asks for charge to be reinstated against Alec Baldwin

SANTA FE, N.M. | A prosecutor has asked a New Mexico judge to reconsider the decision to dismiss an involuntary manslaughter charge against Alec Baldwin in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of a Western movie, according to a court filing made public Wednesday.

Special prosecutor Kari Morrissey said there were insufficient facts to support the July ruling and that Baldwin’s due process rights had not been violated.

State District Court Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer dismissed the case halfway through a trial based on the withholding of evidence by police and prosecutors from the defense in the 2021 shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the film “Rust.”

The charge against Baldwin was dismissed with prejudice, meaning it can’t be revived once any appeals of the decision are exhausted.

Baldwin, the lead actor and co-producer on “Rust,” was pointing a gun at cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during a rehearsal when it went off, killing her and wounding director Joel Souza. Baldwin has said he pulled back the hammer — but not the trigger — and the revolver fired.

The case-ending evidence was ammunition that was brought into the sheriff’s office in March by a man who said it could be related to Hutchins’ killing. Prosecutors said they deemed the ammunition unrelated and unimportant, while Baldwin’s lawyers alleged that they “buried” it and filed a successful motion to dismiss the case.

In her decision to dismiss the Baldwin case, Marlowe Sommer described “egregious discovery violations constituting misconduct” by law enforcement and prosecutors, as well as false testimony about physical evidence by a witness during the trial.

In the request to reconsider, Morrissey argued again that the undisclosed ammunition was not relevant to the case against Baldwin, which hinged on his responsibility to handle a gun safely under familiar industry guidelines.

“No one on the prosecution team ever intentionally kept evidence from the defendant, it simply didn’t occur to the prosecution that the rounds were relevant to the case,” Morrissey wrote.

She asserted that defense attorneys knew about the rounds but canceled an opportunity to view them prior to trial.

“This is a smoke screen created by the defense and was intended to sway and confuse the court … and it was successful,” Morrissey wrote.

Baldwin’s lead attorney, Luke Nikas, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment about Morrissey’s filing.

Movie armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed is serving an 18-month sentence on a conviction for involuntary manslaughter. She was accused of flouting standard safety protocols and missing multiple opportunities to detect forbidden live ammunition on set. Assistant director and safety coordinator David Halls pleaded no contest to the negligent use of a deadly weapon and was sentenced to six months of unsupervised probation. A no contest plea isn’t an admission of guilt but is treated as such for sentencing purposes.

It hasn’t been officially determined who brought the live rounds that killed Hutchins to the set, though prosecutors allege that Gutierrez-Reed was responsible.

The ammunition that skuttled the case was handed over to a Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office crime scene technician who filed the evidence under an unrelated case number. Three of those rounds resembled live rounds that were collected from the “Rust” set after the fatal shooting.

The mysterious ammunition was dropped off at the sheriff’s office by Troy Teske, of Bullhead City, Arizona, who routinely stored weapons and ammunition for his friend and longtime movie-gun coach Thell Reed — Gutierrez-Reed’s step-father and mentor as a film-set armorer.

Morrissey asked the judge to order defense attorneys to show when and how they learned of the ammunition provided by Teske, calling the defense motion to dismiss the case “all a ruse.”

Queen guitarist Brian May says he had a ‘minor stroke’ but can still play

LONDON | Brian May, the lead guitarist of British rock band Queen, revealed Wednesday that he had a “minor stroke” last week, which caused him to temporarily lose control over his arm.

May, 77, said in a video on his website that he was doing “OK” but that he was “grounded” and advised not to drive, fly or do any activity which raises his heart rate too high.

“I’m here to bring you first of all some good news, I think, good news is that I can play guitar after the events of the last few days,” he said. “And I say this because it was in some doubt because that little health hiccup that I mentioned, happened about a week ago, and what they called it was a minor stroke and all of a sudden, out of the blue, I didn’t have any control over this arm.”

May said the experience was “a little scary” but praised the “fantastic care” he received from his local hospital in Surrey, southwest of London.

“I really don’t want sympathy,” he said. “Please don’t do that because it will clutter up my inbox and I hate that!”

May and Roger Taylor, the drummer of Queen, have continued to perform since the band’s frontman Freddie Mercury died in 1991.

A Rembrandt painting sells for $1.4M in Maine

THOMASTON, Maine | A Rembrandt discovered in an attic sold for $1.4 million.

The 17th century painting, “Portrait of a Girl,” by Dutch artist Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was discovered by art appraiser and auctioneer Kaja Veilleux in an attic in an estate in Camden, Maine. A label on the back of the frame noted that it was loaned to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for an exhibition in 1970.

“On house calls, we often go in blind, not knowing what we’ll find,” he said in a statement. “The home was filled with wonderful pieces but it was in the attic, among stacks of art, that we found this remarkable portrait.”

Rembrandt, born in 1606, was a prolific artist who focused on a variety of subjects, from portraits to landscapes to historical and biblical scenes.

“Portrait of a Girl” was painted on an oak panel and mounted in a hand-carved gold Dutch frame, said Veilleux.

An auction by Thomaston Place Auction Galleries yielded a fierce competition on Aug. 24, he said. In the end, a European collector paid $1.41 million for the painting.

—From AP reports