Actor Alec Baldwin Charged Again In Fatal Shooting of ‘Rust’ Cinematographe

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A grand jury in New Mexico has returned an indictment charging Alec Baldwin with involuntary manslaughter in the 2021 shooting death of “Rust” cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. A new set of prosecutors had dropped the charges in April 2023 citing the need for further investigation but had said the charges could be refiled.

It wasn’t in the script for  the  trigger to be  pulled

Alec:“well  the trigger wasn’t  pulled.  i didn’t pull the trigger.no, no i would never point  a gun at anyone and pull a trigger at them 

despite that claime  actor  alec baldwin has been charege  again  in the death of cinematographer halyna  hutchins on the set of ” rust”  will the charges stick

alec baldwin had hoped his legal troubles in the rust set  shooting were behind him.

since  charges had been  dropped in april of last year because new prosecutors took over the case.

at thet time baldvin’s attorneys were of course happy about the announcement and encouraged  a proper investigation.

the new prosecutors in santa fe new mexico droppded the charges because they needed  time to look into the case  since a preliminary hearing was looming .

they   had experts reconstruct  the colt 45 gun that baldwin holding that day , since it had had been brokend  during FBI testing.

Indictment says several witnesses testified in front  the grand  jury including the cameraman and a man  who worked  on the set of rust but  quite over safety concerns.

 this case started of c0urse  back on October 21 st of 2021.

Alec  baldiwn was holding that colt 45  revolver inside of a church

and getting ready for a scene on the set of rust.

when he shot  hutchins the cinematographer

  police  body camera captured the moments after the shooting.

 I  want to  ble clear about  something.nobody and i mean nobody  think that  alec baldwin did this on purpose ,this was clearly  an accident, and that’s why he´s charged  with involuntary manslaughter

alternatives  negligent use of a firearm, and without due caution or  circumspection.

Balwin has  maintained he didn’t pull the trigger and was told the gun was  cold. meaning  it wasn’t loaded.

assistent  directgor  on the det david halls is the person who handed the gun to baldwin. halls’s pleaded to a misdemeanor charge of unsafe handling of a firearm

 the film’s armorer Hanna Gutierrez Reed has pleaded not guilty  to charges of tampering with evidence and involuntary mansaughter.

alec baldwin has likely spent a small fortune on attorneys  he’s selling an estate on Long Island that he put on the market after shooting . the asking price, 18,995 ,000 dollars and that’s actually a price cut.

People magazine  published an article saying sources close to alec baldwin and his  wife say the filing of the charges is  stressful, especially after they  ad a such a nice chirstmas and nrey  year.

The reaction to these  charges and the  alternatives  prosecutors listed.

josh ritter / former  prosecutor.

Ritter said , i do find it shocking, i think manily of because of his history , of this entire case we’ve  gone back and forth of the prosecutions seeming  to  kind of wheels come off of  their investigation 

they’ve had plenty of time to look into  all of this and yet they still  dismiss charges go back and charge them again an now they’re pursuing things against their armor  and now they’re finally coming around to baldwin ,it is not a good look , but as far as charges themsleves they aree not  all that shocking.

police interview/Santa Fe County Sheriff

Ritter :this is what they would have expected, and they  chargesd hin in  the alternative , is what they calle this, they ´ve charged him with two counts  involuntary manslaughter but it’s essentially for the same conduct.

 and the reason why  they did that is that they had to somehow  give some underlying reason w for why this is criminal and invaluntary manslaughter and one it can be that  there’s an underlying crime

Ritter :  here they feel it that it was the negligent handling or use of that firearm is the underlying crime that then led to her death allowing them to charge him with involuntary manslaughter.

Ritter:the other  is  that they feel that he did  not use due  caution or circumspection.which is just kind of your , typical uh, use of  involuntary manslaughter , and according  to the  indictment here it says ” that an ordinary pereson would anticipate that death might occur under the  circumstances. that to me  is where they’re going to have the biggest  problem.

Ritter how are they going to prove that an actor  would feel that death  is going to occur when y they ‘re handed  gun on a set, a gun like they have been many many times in the past  they’re told that  gun is cold or safe and that they should anticipate that shoul leave to someone’s death. i think they  got real problem with this case.

But  doesn´t he have a responsibility, even if he´s told the gun is safe? to inspect that gun?

anybody who’s handled guns or taking a firearms class knows that youn never supposed to point it at somebody, yeas he  was told it was safe but he still had it in his hands.

Ritter: absolutely , right. exept that this is different,if we were talking about a person on the street being handed a weapon,i think you could say,listen they negligently handled it they didn’t check that  it was safe  they should have known  this could be dangerous

Ritter :but you’re  talking about an actor on a set  where guns are going to be used onthat set ,we don’t even know if this is the first time he was handed  a gun on that set.were  guns are going to be used on that set  we don’t even know if this is the first he was handed a gun on  that set . 

he could  have been  handed funs several times before while they werefilming this and never had an issue with any of them or ever thought that the gun could possibly be loaded , so jurors want be asked the question would a normal person have acted this way under the this  cicumstances  and i dont know if they can arrive at a conclusion that this was negligent.

Steve Wolf

steve have strong feelings about this case  we should  mentioned that steve actually was in discussions at one point with the  former prosecutors on the case to possibly consult on the case. so we need to mentioned that full  disclosure.

steve is suprised  by the ferilinf of the charges because it was talket about  this  last april and  steve  thought the charges might  be refiled.

some people  thought was maybe they would  just lay it  all on the armor.

steve: no i actually , i pressed for the  charges to be refiled and spoke…. in e email correspondence with the current prosecutor, i told them  they were not on  shaky grounds to reintroduce these charges, the  rules of firearm safety are not ususally  most of the time when you feel like it , hey ‘re always a nevers.

 steve: you always check the gun before you handle it, you never point  the gun at anyone that you dont intend to injure . and alec knew that , he describe exactly  what that process looked like when he’d worked on other sets

steve :and in fact  in footage from the  the day before , his in a shoot out scene and  he says ” hey guys could you move to the left , i want to make sure i’m not pointing  the gun at you , so he knew you don’t point  guns at people even  on movie sets.

 this  was very clear.and when we say  you  know he’s, he’s an actor  how can we expect  him to be a firearms  expert, well  firearms expert in the case of movie set, really only  means that you know and observe four simple sentences

steve   if an actor  can memorize 120 lines of dialogue  for a movie , they can certainly master these four concepts. you dont  put your finger on the trigger till your’e  ready to shoot, you dont point  guns at things  tou dont want to see a hole in .

you know what your target is and all guns  are loaded, so this are  not  something that requies, you know  PhD  scientists to under stand.

steve  :when somebone hands you a gun,once that gun is in your hand you are legally responsible for what happens with it so if your not sure if it’s emty you ask somebody and you say ,”please ,show me , show me the rounds, shake them ,

i want  to know that i’m not pointing  uh, live ammo at somebody . and i’m personally convinced that if the scene had called for him  to point his  gun at his own head  you know he would don those things.  so i don’t see any  validity in the excuses made for his conduct.

Hutchins died at the hospital

 steve got the question  about he said that  he pushe for the charges to be refiled in email correspondence .her question was did he feel that the special prosecutors were vavering on this. and thinking  they might not refil file the charges against  alec baldwin.

steve : they  had said they might not. and  i simply wanted to reasure them thait if they decided to do that , there were on firm grounds to do so. there was justification

what still concerns people is how  there was even live ammo on the set .are we any closer to figuring out the answer to that question?

steve says  he think it’s irrelevant ,he thin that  there’s entropy in the world , wich means that there’s propensity for things to go from high concentrations to low concentrations that means there’s places in the world where  there’s a lots of ammo .

there’s  places in the world where there’s  very little ammo and as  a result of entropy those  tw0 borders 

Crime Scene Cleaners on the Set of Rust (2021)

steve says that you should  always assume that there’s live ammo ,where you are. and thats why you  check each round before you put it in the gun.  the reasons that there were live ammo could be multiple in this case .

one ,the provider of the ammo may have  seasoned the ammo boxes  inadverently with live rounds. or people may have been shootin the guns on set  ,you know taking them backstage for firearms practice or just fun plinking.

steve also said you always assume that the rounds are  alive until you personally check them. just the same with the firearm you presume that the firearm is loaded until you’ve personally checked it yourself 

 steve: and  non of those things were done.

so how  do josh go about defend alec baldwin  in this case.?

because  like it or not , alec baldwin is a famous guy,he’s  doesn’t have the the best reputation okay this was a horrible accident and we can all understand that this  was not done on purpose. but he doesn’t have a reputation as being a very nice guy , his PR is a mess. and they . amd he and his wife  publicists this, their publicists leak this to the  people magazine ,there’s a story out today saying

its  so toned deaf , sohow do  josh  defend this guy because, this is a guy going into court whether you like it or not, hwo  doesn’t have the best reputation,

he’s got a reputation  as being a hotthead, yeas this was an accident, um…but he’sgoing to have that you know  kind of he’s going to be up against that and then the fact that he’s saying on tape ” i didn’t pull the trigger” and then the prosecution’s going to have expert that say”yeah  you did.”

josh answer  was ,absolutely right ,he has been  his worst enemy in this entire affair and it’sbecause he cant  keep his mouth shot about that . the comments about how this has been stressful are the least of his problems ,as you identified the biggest  problem he’s got  worry about  is that he keeps on talking or he’s made several statements 

not  on the record ,but on tape saying that” he did not pull that trigger “and it soundsd like the prosecution of all the evidence that they have some of the most convincing might be that  , that gun  could not gone off without  the trigger pulletd .that’s going to  become a major problem for him,not so much in the case itself, but in the fact that he adamamently denied it .

 the prosecution is able to get that  in front of jurors.now you’re not talking about a person who is not only negligent  but a pereson who might have been lying about their negligence after the facts and the jurors will not respond to that well .

but josh think what the  defense part has to do identify first and foremost  this is an accident.this is a tragedy , this is horrible,he never  intended for any of this to happen.andyou try to push this as much  into the world of civil liability and civil negligence and not criminal negligence.

josh says that steve did a great job of outlining  what he think what the prosecution’s case is going to be here but josh would highlight  his defense team is that there’s a big different between civil negligence .people making misstakes,people not doing what they should have done , therefore you going to sue them and hold them responsible

 and criminal  negligence which asks jurors to say that not only did that person make a mistake but they were so grossly  indifferent, they were so negligent, they were so didn’t have  any regard for human life that they made the choices that they did. and that’sgoing to be a difficult  argument to make

when josh said , this isn’t a person on the street , this  is an actor who’s  been handed a gun  told that , that gun is cold feels that he’s participating on a movie set.

shold he have looked ,possibly  ,but does that make  it grossly  negligent to the point of criminal conduct and that’s really where  josh reel  the prosecution’s going to have their most  difficult argument to make.

forensics experts had the gun reconstructed. the FBI  ,broke the gun when they ere evaluating it and testing it , and now  it’s been reconstructed and they’re saying” yeah he had to have pulled  the trigger.

this whole  ” i didn’t pull the trigger” is not going to fly .the trigger  had to have been pulled.

steve  and FBI  both reached the same conclusion that the trigger had tohave been pressed. the question  really is , is it relevant that the trigger was pressed or not? and steve didn’t think it was.

he said , any piece of mechanical equipment is  subject to failure and thats why the rules of guns safety don’t rely on the firearm condition they rely  on the firearms handler . so if you dont point a gun at someone no mechanical failure can result in fatality .

if you don’t  put live ammo in the gun  no mechanical failure  can result in fatality  ,so this were procedural errors not equipment errors. 

when you cast a piece of metal it’s  parts  ,it’s you know  nickels and dimes of stuff so you have  to assume that the parts are going  to break .the question is  should the parts breaking have anything to do with leading to a fatality

and that ‘s no  and that’s because you follow procedures that make sure that , what your ‘re doing  makes sure that the gun can’t hurt someone not any  intrinsic feature of the metallurgy of of the gun itself.

so what is the next step here ? we know that there  won’t be a  preliminary hearing since the prosecutors went to a grand jury . before there was going to be a prelim ,now there won’t be because they took this route.there will be an arraignment so what comes after the arraignment ?

 josh said they’re kind of  an a fast track,now usually we would be looking  for forward to a preliminary hearing ,but now they ‘ve already had that probable  cause hearing what they call it 

you’re going to see all sorts of challenges  legally to that indictment  ,they might  go back  and say that they weren’t  propertly instructed.

that they werent given all of the evidence there’s a duty  on the prosecution to present some defense, friendly evidence exculpatory evidence to try to be  fair- minded in the way they  presnt this to the grand  jury

josh  is sure they might attack that  and say putting side all of those arguments you’re going  to have a lot of um… discussion about  evidence and what’s going to be incluuded or not. 

but eventually this thing is going to head toward trial unless he accept some sort of plea which is not outside of the realm

josh  is sure they might attack that  and say putting side all of those arguments you’re going  to have a lot of um… discussion about  evidence and what’s going to be incluuded or not. this  thing is going to head toward a trial and imagine sometime these year.

final thoughts

steve said he  just think it’s very imprtant that they establish through this case and he hate to say “lets make an example here but  lets make an example here. firearms  are dangerous  intrinsically their design is to have lethal consequence and special procedure  have to put in place  and  followed in order to prevent that intended design function from fulfilling it’s purpose.

Private security stand at the entrance of the Bonanza Creek Film Ranch in Santa Fe, N.M., Friday, Oct. 22, 2021.

so if you don’t want guns to hurt people  you have to take special  precautions right now  , alex baldwin is responsible in my opinion for 50% of the fatalities thaat have occured on sets as a result of  firearms misshandling .the killing of   brandon lee’s  son jason being the  other  case  in which  a matter  like this happened.

so  these things , while they’re very rare, and procedures do  work, they can’t happen, they do happen and they  do have lethal consequence, so standard of care must be very high and it must  be consistently very high without  exception ,

it’s when we break those rules that we have these tragedies  ensue so , i hope  the point is well-driven that these are wellest established procedures that when someone hands you a gun and says it’s empty  that means nothing.

unless the armor handed you the gun and the armor had  checked it themselves , in this case that was not the case. the gun was handed to alec by the assistant director the assistant is not an armorer, the assistant director did not check the gun

alec baldwin knew that this was not the armorer and he knew  that you know  pointing guns at people  was dangerous.

so  to have conducted you know  something  that   he knew was dangerous you could  see  it in the footage from the day before  where he says  i dont want  to point  the guin at someone that’s not safe. and to take the gun from somene that he knew was not  the armorer that he knew was not qualified to check the gun   .

 in steve’s  opinion , it was grossly negligent and skipped the major hurdle in the   gun safety process .

anyways .we  will see how it all tuns out……..right?