Before the Alec Baldwin Trial’s End, 2 Jurors Had Doubts About His Guilt

When the judge threw out the involuntary manslaughter case against Alec Baldwin earlier this month after finding that the prosecution had withheld evidence that could have helped his defense, it left key questions that have hung over the case for more than two years unresolved.

But two members of the jury who spoke about the case publicly for the first time on Saturday said in interviews that they had been far from convinced — given the evidence they had heard before the trial was brought to its abrupt end — that Mr. Baldwin was guilty of involuntary manslaughter for the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on a film set.

“As the week went by, it just didn’t, it didn’t seem like a very strong case,” Johanna Haag, known to the court as juror No. 7, said in a phone interview on Saturday.

Gabriela Picayo, who was identified in court documents as juror No. 9, said that she too had been having serious doubts about the case against Mr. Baldwin before it was dismissed.

A critical moment for her during the trial, she said, was when she learned that the armorer who had loaded a live round into the gun that day, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, had already been convicted of involuntary manslaughter. “I’m still here, I’m still open to hearing and obviously trying to stay unbiased,” Ms. Picayo said of her thinking at the time, “but I was starting to move towards the direction of thinking that this was very silly and he should not be on trial.”

The trial centered on what happened on Oct. 21, 2021, when Mr. Baldwin was rehearsing on the set of the film “Rust” in New Mexico with a gun that he had been told was “cold” — meaning that it should have contained no live ammunition — when it suddenly fired a bullet that killed Halyna Hutchins, the movie’s cinematographer.