wrongful

Four years after the “Rust” movie shooting, New Mexico officials have moved Alec Baldwin’s lawsuit alleging malicious prosecution to federal court.

This week’s filing is the latest twist in the long legal saga after the October 2021 on-set death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

Baldwin, the 67-year-old star and a producer of the western film, had been facing a felony involuntary manslaughter charge for his role in Hutchins’ accidental shooting. But the judge overseeing Baldwin’s case abruptly dismissed the charge against him during his July 2024 trial after concluding that prosecutors withheld evidence that may have been helpful to his legal team.

Six months later, Baldwin sued New Mexico’s district attorney and special prosecutors, asserting malicious prosecution. The actor claimed he had been made a celebrity scapegoat because of the intense media pressure on local authorities to solve the high-profile case.

His lawsuit targeted New Mexico special prosecutor Kari T. Morrissey, 1st Judicial Dist. Atty. Mary Carmack-Altwies and Santa Fe County sheriff’s deputies, who led the investigation into Hutchins’ death.

The defendants have denied Baldwin’s allegations.

Baldwin’s wrongful prosecution suit was first filed in New Mexico court in Santa Fe.

On Tuesday, the defendants, including Morrissey, exercised their legal right to shift the case to federal court. The decision was made, in part, because “Mr. Baldwin brought federal civil rights claims in his lawsuit,” said Albuquerque attorney Luis Robles, who represents the defendants.

In addition, Baldwin does not live in New Mexico, where the case was filed.

Baldwin could object to the move and petition for it to be brought back to state court. On Wednesday, his team was not immediately available for comment.

A New Mexico judge had dismissed Baldwin’s malicious prosecution claims in July, citing 90 days of inactivity in the case. Baldwin’s legal team petitioned to get the case reinstated and the judge agreed to the request.

That prompted the defendants’ move to shift the case to the higher court.

During his Santa Fe trial last year, Baldwin’s lawyers had sought to turn the focus away from whether Baldwin pulled his gun’s trigger in the accidental shooting to where the lethal bullet came from.

Baldwin’s attorneys repeatedly accused law enforcement officers and prosecutors of bungling the case, including by allegedly hiding potential evidence — a batch of bullets that they said may have been related to the one that killed Hutchins.

Angels star Mike Trout is planning to testify Tuesday in a lawsuit over whether the MLB team should be held responsible for the drug overdose death of pitcher Tyler Skaggs.

Trout, a three-time American League most valuable player who hit his 400th career home run this year, is expected to take the stand in a Southern California courtroom and speak about his friendship with Skaggs, who died on a team trip to Texas in 2019 after taking a fentanyl-laced pill he got from Angels communication director Eric Kay. Trout could also be asked about what he knew of Kay’s drug use at the time.

The testimony will come in the trial for a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Skaggs’ wife, Carli, and his parents seeking to hold the Angels’ responsible for his death. The family contends the Angels made a series of reckless decisions that gave Kay access to MLB players when he was addicted to drugs and dealing them; the team has countered that Skaggs was also drinking heavily and his actions occurred on his own time and in the privacy of his hotel room when he died.

During opening statements, a lawyer for the Skaggs family said Trout was aware of Kay’s drug problem and had offered to pay for him to attend rehab. Other players, including former Angels pitcher Wade Miley, who currently plays for the Cincinnati Reds, could also testify during what is expected to be a weeks-long trial in Santa Ana.

The civil case comes more than six years after 27-year-old Skaggs was found dead in the suburban Dallas hotel room where he was staying as the Angels were supposed to open a four-game series against the Texas Rangers. A coroner’s report says Skaggs choked to death on his vomit and that a toxic mix of alcohol, fentanyl and oxycodone was found in his system.

Kay was convicted in 2022 of providing Skaggs with an oxycodone pill laced with fentanyl and sentenced to 22 years in federal prison. His federal criminal trial in Texas included testimony from five MLB players who said they received oxycodone from Kay at various times from 2017 to 2019, the years he was accused of obtaining pills and giving them to Angels players.

Angels outfielder Mike Trout catches a fly ball in front of graphic honoring the life of Tyler Skaggs at Angel Stadium in 2019.

(John McCoy / Getty Images)

The family is seeking $118 million for Skaggs’ lost earnings, compensation for pain and suffering and punitive damages against the team.

Skaggs had been a regular in the Angels’ starting rotation since late 2016 and struggled with injuries repeatedly during that time. He previously played for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

After Skaggs’ death, the MLB reached a deal with the players association to start testing for opioids and to refer those who test positive to the treatment board.

Taxin writes for the Associated Press.

Mahmoud Khalil, a former student activist imprisoned for more than three months, has filed a wrongful detention claim against the administration of President Donald Trump, seeking $20m in damages.

Thursday’s court filings allege that the Trump administration smeared his reputation, maliciously prosecuted Khalil and unlawfully imprisoned him.

The claim names the United States Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of State as defendants.

In an interview with The Associated Press (AP), Khalil said he hopes his claim will show that the Trump administration cannot bully activists into silence.

“They are abusing their power because they think they are untouchable,” Khalil said. “Unless they feel there is some sort of accountability, it will continue to go unchecked.”

Thursday’s claim is likely to be the precursor to a full-fledged lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

Khalil, who served as a spokesperson for the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, said he plans to use any money he receives from his claim to help other activists whose speech Trump has attempted to suppress.

He also told the AP he would accept an apology and a revision of the Trump administration’s deportation policies. Khalil himself continues to face deportation proceedings as a result of his activism.

What happened?

Born to Palestinian parents in Damascus, Syria, Khalil was a face for the Palestinian solidarity movement in the US after the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023.

United Nations experts and human rights groups have warned that Israel’s tactics in Gaza are “consistent with genocide”, and Columbia University became the epicentre for global, student-led protests.

“I’m one of the lucky ones who are able to advocate for the rights of Palestinians, the folks who are getting killed back in Palestine,” Khalil told Al Jazeera in May 2024.

But Trump campaigned for a second term on pledges to crack down on immigration to the US and stamp out the antiwar protests, which he described as anti-Semitic.

Upon taking office in January, Trump issued executive orders setting the stage for the removal of foreign nationals deemed to have “hostile attitudes” towards the US or who were accused of supporting “threats to our national security”.

One of the orders instructed federal authorities to take “actions to remove such aliens” from the US.

“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” Trump wrote at the time. “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”

Khalil was the first major arrest in Trump’s crackdown on the student protesters. Video shot by his pregnant wife, Noor Abdalla, on March 8 shows plain-clothed immigration officers handcuffing Khalil and leading him out of his university apartment complex in New York City.

He was swiftly moved from New York to New Jersey and then to Louisiana, where he was held at the LaSalle Detention Center in Jena ahead of his planned deportation.

Inside the legal proceedings

Lawyers for Khalil, however, swiftly filed two challenges: one against his deportation and one against his detention, in what is called a habeas corpus petition.

Because of the swift and clandestine nature of his departure to Louisiana, Khalil’s lawyers have said they did not know where their client was in the initial days after his arrest. Khalil is a permanent US resident, and his wife a citizen.

To justify his deportation, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked a rarely used provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. That provision allows the secretary of state to remove any foreign nationals he believes to have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”.

Khalil has not been charged with any crime. The US, however, is a close ally of Israel and has provided military support to its campaign in Gaza, which has killed at least 57,762 people.

On March 9, shortly after Khalil’s arrest, the Department of Homeland Security also issued a statement accusing Khalil of anti-Semitism, citing Trump’s executive orders.

“Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization,” the statement said. “ICE and the Department of State are committed to enforcing President Trump’s executive orders and to protecting US national security.”

Trump himself called Khalil a “Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student” and a “terrorist sympathizer”.

“This is the first arrest of many to come,” the president wrote on social media. “We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.”

But Khalil and his legal team have accused the Trump administration of violating his constitutional rights to free speech.

Since Khalil’s arrest, other foreign students have been arrested too, including Mohsen Mahdawi and Rumeysa Ozturk, who was reportedly imprisoned for writing an opinion article in her student newspaper against Israel’s war.

On June 20, a judge in New Jersey ordered Khalil’s release. He missed the birth of his first child while incarcerated.