By Julia Jacobs and Graham Bowley
Prosecutors painted Alec Baldwin as a headstrong actor who repeatedly shirked his duty to maintain gun safety on the set of his film, leading to the shooting death of its cinematographer.
The defense argued that it was a “tragic accident,” and that Baldwin had no reason to believe that there was live ammunition in his gun, or anywhere on the set of the western “Rust.”
More than two years and eight months after the gun he was rehearsing with fired a fatal bullet, Baldwin found himself in a New Mexico courthouse Wednesday standing trial on a charge of involuntary manslaughter. If convicted, he faces up to 18 months in prison.
The case is being closely watched by Hollywood, and not just because of the star at the center of it, famous for many movie and TV roles, including “30 Rock” and “Saturday Night Live.” The question of an actor’s liability has weighed over the case since the beginning; SAG-AFTRA, the union representing film and television workers, has argued that gun safety on sets is the responsibility of qualified professionals, not performers.
Erlinda O. Johnson, one of the prosecutors, told the jury in her opening statements that Baldwin should be held criminally responsible for the death of Halyna Hutchins, the “Rust” cinematographer, because he had failed to take part in safety checks that day to see whether his gun contained a live round and because he used the weapon in a reckless fashion.
“He pointed the gun at another human being, cocked the hammer and pulled that trigger, in reckless disregard for Ms. Hutchins’ safety,” she said in the Santa Fe County District Courthouse.
One of Baldwin’s defense lawyers, Alex Spiro, argued that the actor could not be found guilty of involuntary manslaughter because it was unthinkable for live ammunition to be loaded into a gun that was being used as a prop on the set of a movie. He said Baldwin had been told that day that the gun was “cold,” which he said communicated to the whole production that “there’s nothing in the gun that can hurt anybody.”
“Cold guns can’t hurt people,” Spiro said. “It’s impossible. Literally impossible.”
Spiro faulted the crew members who were supposed to oversee gun safety on the set: the film’s armorer and its first assistant director. The armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, was convicted this year of involuntary manslaughter for loading a live round into the gun and sentenced to 18 months in prison. The first assistant director, Dave Halls, has admitted to failing to thoroughly check the revolver and agreed to a plea deal on a charge of negligent use of a deadly weapon, avoiding prison time.
The prosecution has blamed Gutierrez-Reed for bringing live rounds onto the set, which her lawyer has disputed.
In opening statements, the prosecution and the defense sparred over questions of workplace safety, the responsibility of actors and Baldwin’s behavior on the set.
Johnson told jurors that the “evidence you will see will paint a real-life picture of a real-life workplace where this defendant mishandled this gun,” and maintained that Baldwin had a history on the set of being reckless with firearms.
“You will see him using this gun as a pointer to point at people, to point at things,” she said. “You will see him cock the hammer when he’s not supposed to cock the hammer. You will see him put his finger on the trigger when his finger is not supposed to be on the trigger. You will hear about numerous breaches of firearm safety with this defendant and this use of this firearm.”
Baldwin has vehemently denied pulling the trigger before the gun fired on Oct. 21, 2021, killing Hutchins, a 42-year-old cinematographer from Ukraine. He has said that he pulled the hammer of the gun all the way back and let it go in an action that might have set it off. Prosecutors have sought to discredit that account, arguing that several rounds of forensic testing had found that the gun could not have gone off without pulling the trigger.
At trial, the actor’s lawyers appeared to temper Baldwin’s claim a bit, saying that no witnesses had seen him “intentionally” pull the trigger that day. But even if he did, the defense argued, it would not be against the law to do so while filming a scene for a movie after he had been told the gun was “cold,” meaning it could not fire.
“On a movie set, you’re allowed to pull the trigger,” Spiro said in court. “So even if — even if — he intentionally pulled the trigger like the prosecutor just demonstrated, that doesn’t make him guilty of homicide.”
Spiro warned the jury against deciding a case based on whether a defendant “misspoke” or said something that ended up not being correct.
Sitting at the defense table in between two of his lawyers, Baldwin, wearing a suit, a patterned tie and thick framed glasses, listened intently, sometimes taking notes on a legal pad, and looking somber as body camera footage of the shooting’s aftermath was shown. He had supporters sitting behind him, including his wife, Hilaria Baldwin, and siblings, including his brother Stephen Baldwin.
Outlining the defense, Spiro sought to counter the prosecution’s contention that the shooting occurred in a typical workplace, telling the jurors that actors shooting blanks out of real guns is what happens on the set of a western. “You’ve all seen gunfights in movies,” he said. In the film, which was later completed in Montana but has not yet been released, Baldwin plays an outlaw named Harland Rust.
The defense team played the emergency call that the production’s script supervisor made immediately after Hutchins was shot. Spiro underscored for the jury that the supervisor said Hutchins was “accidentally shot on a movie set with a prop gun” and suggested that the movie’s first assistant director, Halls, held some responsibility. “Not a word about Alec Baldwin,” Spiro said.
Baldwin was first charged in the shooting in January 2023. But months later, prosecutors dropped that charge after receiving new evidence that the gun might have been modified without his knowledge, potentially making an unintentional discharge easier. After forensic analysis found that the trigger must have been pulled for the gun to go off, the case was revived and a grand jury indicted him on a charge of involuntary manslaughter.
Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer, of the First Judicial District of New Mexico, told jurors the trial was expected to take eight days, not including their deliberations.
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