Before the judge in Alec Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter trial dismissed the case against him on July 12, juror Martina Marquez had her doubts he was guilty — and grew to consider the case against him as “pointless.”
New Mexico resident Marquez, 36, an oncology scheduler noted in court documents as juror No. 1, says she “was open-minded to listening to the facts” from the start of the legal proceedings.
However, as the prosecutors and defense presented evidence and elicited testimony from witnesses over the first two days of the trial, the more she became convinced the “case seemed to be mishandled from the get-go,” she tells PEOPLE in her first interview.
Baldwin, 66, was holding a prop gun on the set of the Western movie Rust in 2021 when it discharged, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injuring director Joel Souza. A grand jury indicted Baldwin — who said in interviews he did not pull the trigger or know why the gun contained live ammunition — on one charge of involuntary manslaughter in January.
During the trial, special prosecutor Erlinda Johnson painted the movie’s star as a “reckless” person who ignored standard gun safety protocol, which, she claimed, contributed to Hutchins’ death.
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But Marquez says she came to see the ordeal “as an unfortunate accident,” she tells PEOPLE. “The indictment charge seemed a little bit harsh.”
“Just starting from the lapel cam videos, it didn’t make sense how they could point fingers directly towards him as a whole,” she says. She points to the sheer number of people on set in the aftermath of the shooting, as seen in body camera footage from Timoteo Benavidez, a lieutenant with the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office.
Benavidez’s footage, which was shown in court, also showed him searching for the prop gun that Baldwin held, which he did not receive until it was given to him by Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed (who was convicted in March of involuntary manslaughter for accidentally loading live ammunition into the firearm and is now serving 18 months in prison).
“It didn’t make sense,” continues Marquez. “We all watch TV and we watch movies. You’re not supposed to really touch evidence and move it from place to place. So that made me iffy about the situation because it could have been in so many people’s hands by the time the lieutenant actually confiscated it.”
Marquez says she places the blame on Gutierrez-Reed: “I felt like she was liable for what happened.”
Referring to the time spent investigating and bringing charges against Baldwin, Marquez says, “it didn’t need to go this far. And it did seem pointless.”
Though she and her fellow jurors did not discuss the case among themselves (abiding by instructions from the court), she said she got the impression that “we all were on the same page” regarding what they saw as Baldwin’s lack of culpability.
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Asked if she thought prosecutors went after Baldwin because he is a celebrity, Marquez agreed.
“I do think they were,” she said. “I feel like they needed to pin [the death] on somebody.”
Two other jurors also expressed their doubts about the case against Baldwin in a July 20 interview with The New York Times.
On the third day of the trial, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer dismissed the case against Baldwin after his defense team claimed prosecutors withheld evidence.
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The day prior, they learned via testimony from crime scene technician Marissa Poppell that a man named Troy Teske, a friend of Thell Reed, the father of armorer Gutierrez-Reed — turned over ammunition to authorities that he thought was connected to the case. Baldwin’s lawyers said the defense was never made aware of it, robbing them of the ability to determine its relevance on their own. (Prosecutor Kari T. Morrissey said it had “no evidentiary value.”)
“This is critical evidence in the case that was never disclosed to us…We were entitled to it,” attorney Luke Nikas said in court. “This case should be dismissed, Your Honor.”
Sommer ultimately dismissed the case against Baldwin. “The late discovery of this evidence during trial has impeded the effective use of evidence in such a way that it has impacted the fundamental fairness of the proceedings,” she said.
If convicted, Baldwin, who cried in court when he heard Sommer’s ruling, would have faced up to 18 months in prison.
