SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) Alec Baldwin ‘s lawyers questioned a crime scene technician who argued that the search for the live bullet that was loaded into the actor’s handgun and killed cinematographer Halina Hutchins was sloppy and inadequate.
On the second day of Baldwin’s manslaughter trial in New Mexico, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer sided with the prosecution on Thursday, allowing key testimony that showed Baldwin’s knowledge of guns and the power of blank shots.
Earlier, Alex Spiro grilled Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department technician Marissa Poppel specifically about search warrants served on a prop truck on the set of “Lust” a week after Hutchins’ death, and on a prop warehouse more than a month after he was shot.
The questioning eventually led to Spiro asking Poppel whether police and prosecutors were “just trying to get this over with so the prosecution could focus on Alec Baldwin?”
“No,” she answered.
Among arguments vigorously refuted and rejected by the prosecution, defense questioning focused primarily on the search of the warehouse and prop truck where the guns were kept in a safe belonging to Seth Kenney, an Albuquerque-based supplier of ammunition and weapons to “Rust” who developed a working relationship with investigators shortly after the fatal shooting.
Spiro suggested the relationship may have been too close.
“We had a witness who assisted with the search,” Spiro said when asked about the warrant that had been executed on the truck, “a man named Seth Kenney. Not only did he assist, he was the one who actually opened the safe.”
“Yeah, he had that combination,” Poppel said.
“Why did police wait a week to go to the prop truck?” Spiro asked.
“A search warrant had to be written,” Poppel responded. “I don’t know exactly why there was a time lag.”
Spiro responded that a search warrant for the church building where the shooting occurred was obtained within a day.
“Why can a search warrant be issued in one day for some things but take seven days for others?”
Spiro asked Poppel, who found six live rounds of ammunition at the shooting scene, if he was surprised they didn’t find any live ammunition in the truck.
“That’s not necessarily the case,” she said.
“There are live bullets all over the set, right?” Spiro asked. Poppel replied, “Yes.”
“You go to the prop truck a week later and it’s got all this ammo in it,” Spiro asked, “and there’s not a single live round in it?”
Poppel answered “yes” to both questions.
“Let me just ask you,” the lawyer finally said, “when did you start to suspect Seth Kenny?”
Poppel responded, “No.”
Kenney has not been charged with any wrongdoing. His lawyer did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Special prosecutor Kari Morrissey tried to make the defense’s approach irrelevant by changing her questioning of Popell, asking whether Alec Baldwin was charged with manslaughter for bringing live ammunition to the set or for having a loaded gun, to which Popell answered “no” to both.
Poppel said: Hannah Gutierrez Reid The woman in charge of firearms for the film, who has already been convicted of manslaughter in the shooting, brought along ammunition given to her by her father.
Morrissey defended Mr Kenney’s role and also cross-examined the lead detective on the case, Sheriff’s Corporal Alexandria Hancock, who testified briefly at the end of the day and is expected to be on the stand for much of Friday.
“Has your investigation so far found any evidence that Seth Kenney supplied live ammunition to the set of ‘Last?'” Morrissey asked. Hancock replied, “No.”
Prosecutors were particularly scornful when the defense questioned Poppel about a bullet that a good Samaritan brought to the Sheriff’s Department after the Gutierrez Reed trial earlier this year. The good Samaritan argued that that bullet was the source of the bullet that killed Hutchins and that Kenney had misled authorities.
Spiro said Poppel “suppressed” this evidence and it was not provided to the defense in either Baldwin’s or Gutierrez-Reed’s cases.
During cross examination, Morrissey established that the source of the ammunition was Troy Teske, a friend of Gutierrez Reed’s father, and that although there were similarities, the bullets were not the same size as the live rounds found within the set of “Lust,” including the bullet that killed Hutchins.
“Do you still have the ammunition that Mr. Teske, the good Samaritan who is a close friend of Ms. Hannah Gutierrez’s father, brought to you after her conviction?”
Poppel answered, “Yes.”
“If we bring that in here and show it to the jury, they can see for themselves that it doesn’t match the live ammunition used on the set of ‘Lust,'” he said.
Yes, the technician replied.
Spiro had Poppel testify that it could be very difficult to tell the difference between the dummy bullets used on set to look like ammunition on screen and the real bullets that caused the deadly fire on set.
This was an attempt to refute the prosecution’s argument that Baldwin recklessly disregarded gun safety.
Hutchins’ Death Baldwin was charged with felony manslaughter in a fatal shooting that shocked the film industry nearly three years ago when it injured director Joel Souza. The 66-year-old star The “30 Rock” producer and frequent “Saturday Night Live” host faces up to 18 months in prison.
His wife, Hilaria Baldwin, his brother, Stephen Baldwin, and his sister, Elizabeth Keuchler, sat in the gallery behind him for the first two days.
___
Dalton reported from Los Angeles.
___ For more on Alec Baldwin’s manslaughter trial, see: https://apnews.com/hub/AlecBaldwin
