A New Mexico judge dismissed several child sex abuse counts against Emmy Award-winning actor Timothy Busfield on Friday. At a hearing, Judge Joseph A. Montano approved Busfield's motion to have his indictment thrown out, citing prosecutorial misconduct and procedural errors that had compromised the grand jury proceedings.
The court order stated that the prosecutor had not acted with the fairness and impartiality the role demands, and that the grand jury proceedings had unfolded in ways that ran counter to statutes put in place to safeguard the structural integrity of the grand jury process. Busfield had been indicted by state prosecutors in February on four counts of criminal sexual contact of a child.
The case centred on counts involving two brothers who worked as actors on the Fox crime series "The Cleaning Lady" — counts that were later dropped — and Busfield had entered a not-guilty plea to each of them. The actor is known for television roles on "The West Wing" and "Thirtysomething."
Busfield's attorney had not yet returned a request for comment. The Bernalillo County District Attorney's Office indicated through a spokesperson that prosecutors were weighing their next steps. Separately, a New Mexico judge had moved in January to place Busfield under arrest on charges encompassing two counts of criminal sexual contact with a minor alongside one count of child abuse.
An affidavit submitted by New Mexico authorities contains allegations that Busfield engaged in inappropriate physical contact with child performers during his work on "The Cleaning Lady" as an actor, director, and producer. A former child performer stated that Busfield touched his genitals on multiple occasions during filming, with the alleged incidents beginning when the accuser was seven years of age. The complainant alleged that Busfield subjected him to repeated inappropriate contact on multiple occasions when he was around the age of eight.
That same affidavit documented a police interview in which Busfield raised the possibility that the boys' mother had sought payback against the director over a casting choice tied to the show's final season. Busfield later expanded on that theory in a June court filing that asked for the indictment to be thrown out. The motion contended that grand jurors had been denied access to additional information, that other potential witnesses had been prevented from testifying, and that the grand jury had functioned as an arm of the prosecution rather than as a body operating independently of it, rendering the indictment invalid on those grounds.
Prosecutors filed a formal reply disputing each of those points and urging the court to leave the indictment in place. Friday's order pushed back the jury trial that had been scheduled to begin on 10 May 2027.
