A federal judge has dismissed most of Alec Baldwin's civil rights lawsuit alleging malicious prosecution against the Santa Fe district attorney's team over the "Rust" shooting case, ruling that the prosecutors are entitled to absolute immunity — even as she acknowledged a "very disturbing picture" of alleged prosecutorial misconduct.
U.S. District Judge Kea W. Riggs issued the decision on September 30, finding that special prosecutor Kari Morrissey, Santa Fe District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies and former special prosecutor Andrea Reeb cannot be held personally liable for much of the misconduct alleged in Baldwin's lawsuit. Riggs found that decisions involving evidence disclosure, grand jury proceedings and trial preparation were closely tied to the prosecutors' roles as advocates and therefore protected by absolute immunity. "The doctrine of absolute prosecutorial immunity is worthwhile only if it applies to hard cases, occasionally shielding acts of gross misconduct," she wrote. "If instead the doctrine yielded whenever a court determined that the conduct was sufficiently distasteful, it would be no doctrine at all."
The ruling does not end the case entirely. Claims involving Morrissey's statements to the media and her alleged agreement to have ammunition logged under a separate case number survive, because the defendants did not seek their dismissal. Riggs wrote that those claims "survive this stage of litigation" — a narrow opening in an otherwise sweeping defeat for the actor.
Baldwin filed the civil rights case after his involuntary manslaughter trial ended abruptly in July 2024 over the fatal October 2021 shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the New Mexico set of "Rust." The trial judge dismissed the charge with prejudice after finding prosecutors had failed to disclose live ammunition that retired Arizona police officer Troy Teske had turned over to the Santa Fe Sheriff's Office — bullets that were never inventoried with the "Rust" case and therefore never disclosed to Baldwin or to armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed. The criminal court later found the prosecution had "intentionally and deliberately withheld" key evidence. Baldwin, 68, has always denied pulling the trigger on the prop gun.
In the civil ruling, Riggs was unsparing about what the complaint alleged: Morrissey had repeatedly failed to meet discovery obligations and had given "inconsistent" testimony concerning the suppressed evidence. But she held that immunity must apply even in hard cases. Baldwin has not commented on the judgment. The surviving claims will proceed — but the core of his effort to hold the "Rust" prosecutors personally accountable has been shut down by one of the law's oldest shields.