SANTA FE, N.M. — The criminal case against Alec Baldwin was about the handling of bullets from the beginning. And the handling of bullets brought it to an end.

When cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was shot and killed nearly three years ago on the New Mexico set of the film “Rust,” one question obsessed authorities yet was never definitively answered: How was it possible that live, lethal rounds had gotten into the mix with the blanks that traditionally make movie gunfire and the inert dummy rounds that play the role of bullets on screen, then into the revolver that Baldwin, in character, was pointing at Hutchins?

Evidence that Baldwin's attorneys unearthed as part of a possible explanation — ammunition turned over by a man who walked into the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office in March — brought the actor's involuntary manslaughter trial to a swift and sudden end Friday when a judge ruled prosecutors had improperly failed to share that evidence.

One of two special prosecutors on the case, who resigned just a few hours before the dismissal, told The Associated Press on Saturday that the judge's decision was correct.

“When you step back and you think about, ‘OK, could the defense have made use of this in preparing a defense?’ And the answer is possibly, yeah. ... Then the proper remedy should be dismissal," Erlinda Ocampo Johnson said, adding that it's unfortunate that the jury “never got to hear the facts and make a decision.”

With the trial ended in its infancy, it is difficult to say whether the case made by Baldwin's elite and expensive team of lawyers would have shed light on the live rounds question or would have muddied it further.