A week ago last Friday, on May 17, Judge Mary Marlow Sommer, presiding over the manslaughter trial of Alec Baldwin in the shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of low-budge western movie “Rust,” heard oral arguments around the defense team’s motion to dismiss the grand jury indictment on a number of grounds.
This motion was, of course, contested by Special Prosecutor Kari Morrissey. Although my own legal sense is that the motion was without substantive merit, it was interesting to observe Judge Sommer go rather hard at Prosecutor Morrissey on some of the key arguments raised by the defense team.
I covered that oral argument here at Law of Self Defense last Saturday, May 18.
Nevertheless, last week Judge Morrissey issued her ruling denying the defense motion to dismiss the grand jury indictment, and so we will be proceeding to the actual manslaughter trial, with jury selection scheduled for July 9 and the trial proper scheduled to begin July 10.
I will, of course, be live streaming the trial for its duration.
Today we dig into Judge Sommer’s denial order, and see to what extent it tracks with my own legal reasoning on the dismissal of the indictment arguments on each side.
Order Denying Motion to Dismiss Indictment
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Transcript
No transcript today, as the show is mostly reading the order linked above.
Andrew, Based on your explanation of jury instructions in the Baldwin case, do you think that the judge in Trump’s case blew it with his jury instructions?
Theodore:
If you are referring to the question of unanimity in the jury instructions, you might be interested in Andrew’s post on a New Jersey decision concerning unanimity in self-defense:
https://lawofselfdefense.com/does-a-jury-have-to-agree-on-exactly-how-you-failed-self-defense/
I posted two cases from Colorado covering the same issue on that blog, and they present both sides of the issue. Although these cases concern self-defense and not falsifying business records, they focus on an issue like the claims made about Trump’s jury instructions. I am not sure if the New York appellate courts have addressed this type of issue, but if they grant certiorari in his appeal, we will find out what they think of this issue.
Great stuff, Mike, many thanks.
—Andrew
It’s not often a defendant can bang the table hard enough to get a slam-dunk case against him dismissed.