By Brad Brooks
(Reuters) - A New Mexico criminal case against actor Alec Baldwin stemming from a fatal shooting on the set of his movie "Rust" in 2021 ended on Monday, with a prosecutor dropping her appeal of the case's dismissal.
Special Prosecutor Kari Morrissey withdrew that appeal, according to a statement from the Frist Judicial District Attorney's office.
Baldwin's lawyers Luke Nikas and Alex Spiro said in a statement that "today's decision to dismiss the appeal is the final vindication of what Alec Baldwin and his attorneys have said from the beginning - this was an unspeakable tragedy but Alec Baldwin committed no crime."
A New Mexico judge had dismissed involuntary manslaughter charges against Baldwin in July, agreeing with the actor's lawyers that Morrissey and the sheriff's office concealed evidence about the source of the live round that killed "Rust" cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in 2021.
The district attorney office said it still strongly disagreed with the judge's decision to toss out the case against Baldwin.
But the decision to drop the appeal of that decision was made after the Office of the Attorney General told Morrissey that it "did not intend to exhaustively pursue the appeal on behalf of the prosecution," according to the statement.
Hutchins died when Baldwin pointed a gun at her as they set up a camera shot on a movie set near Santa Fe. The gun fired a live round inadvertently loaded by the movie's chief weapons handler Hannah Gutierrez. Gutierrez was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in March and sentenced a month later.
The "30 Rock" actor denied ever pulling the trigger and said he had been directed to aim it at the camera. But the FBI and an independent firearms expert found the gun would not fire without the trigger depressed.
The death of Hutchins was the first on-set fatal shooting with a live round mistaken for a dummy or blank round since Hollywood's silent era, according to historian Alan Rode.
Hollywood on-set shootings have in the past been settled through civil lawsuits, such as the last fatality in 1993 when Brandon Lee was killed when a blank round dislodged a bullet stuck in a revolver's barrel during filming of "The Crow."