Queue loud song by The Who...

The prosecution brought an envelope of bullets into the courtroom but had never notified the defense they had them. That would be a BIG fucking 'nope' in any court case.

Archive source

Now I’m very curious. It looks like the question revolves around how, exactly, the police got a hold of the ammunition involved?

Were you not 'very curious' enough to actually look at literally any of the real and active reporting on this before your comment?

There was no question as to 'how, exactly, the police got a hold of the ammunition involved' and it is a core fact among the details of why case was dismissed.

They even played the officer's bodycam footage of an early formal interview of the former officer that brought the bullets in as evidence (that the officer on the stand pitifully tried to pretend wasn't an interview) in which the prosecutor was present. The evidence was intentionally filed under another case number so it wouldn't be associated with Baldwin's case (or the Reed case that I believe was ongoing when it was actually brought in). And THEN, cherry on top, they also discovered while looking at the undisclosed bullet evidence in this court, despite the prosecutors claims that the bullets were not associated with the Rust set thus not counted as evidence, that there were matching bullets of the type that were on the Rust set.

Some link to this as the moment the case fully unraveled: https://www.youtube.com/live/0VEoEvcJNhE?t=28995s

Where the prosecutor has put herself on the stand and opened herself up to answering defense questions under oath: https://www.youtube.com/live/0VEoEvcJNhE?t=32578s

It's among the craziest prosecutorial malfeasance shit I've ever seen from a high profile, video recorded court proceeding. One prosecutor resigned and LEFT earlier in the day as things were unraveling, and then the prosecutor that was still there put herself on the stand as-a-prosecution-witness to give testimony about the bullets, which even allowed the defense to question her about witness statements that she called Baldwin a cocksucker, about witness statements that she called Baldwin an arrogant prick, and about witness statements that she would 'teach him a lesson'. In the context of a lawyer, putting oneself on the witness stand as a lawyer in the case, even as a prosecutor, is mental breakdown levels of personal desperation, even if they want to claim it was an attempt to preserve an appeal of the dismissal.

Yes and no. The circumstances surrounding the death were… Not great. Evidence of Baldwin playing with the weapon, pretending to fire it, aiming it at cast and crew, etc… Plus there’s the whole “they were filming during a strike, and Baldwin (who was also the executive producer) went out of his way to hire an unqualified scab as a weapons master” part of things too.

If they wanted to let a rich person walk free they could have simply refused to prosecute

In the article it mentions how the evidence came to light after her conviction. I don't know if that means her appeal changes because of this, but it seems to me like this evidence only affected Baldwin's case and how the prosecution handled it.

Expensive lawyers are better about using slip ups to get their clients free, but that doesn't mean that the only difference between the two was money.

They're not fake guns; they're real guns with what was supposed to be fake ammo. Because the gun in question was a revolver, the ammo must also look real since you can see the tips of the bullets in the cylinder. Typically, there's a hole in the side of the casing indicating that it's a dummy round, but you can no longer see that once it's been loaded into the gun.