Grand jury in New Mexico charged the actor for a shooting on Rust set that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins
Actor Alec Baldwin is facing a new involuntary manslaughter charge over the 2021 fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of the movie Rust.
A Santa Fe, New Mexico, grand jury indicted Baldwin on Friday, months after prosecutors had dismissed the same criminal charge against him.
During an October 2021 rehearsal on the set of Rust, a western drama, Baldwin was pointing a gun at cinematographer Halyna Hutchins when it went off, fatally striking her and wounding Joel Souza, the film’s director.
Baldwin, a co-producer and star of the film, has said he did not pull the trigger, but pulled back the hammer of the gun before it fired.
Last April, special prosecutors dismissed the involuntary manslaughter charge against Baldwin, saying the firearm might have been modified prior to the shooting and malfunctioned and that forensic analysis was warranted. But in August, prosecutors said they were considering re-filing the charges after a new analysis of the weapon was completed.
This from the start has seemed to me like a prosecutor trying to make a name for themselves by taking down a famous person.
If you’re doing a scene where you throw acid on somebody is the person throwing the acid supposed to check to make sure it’s not actually acid before they throw it?
Should they check to make sure the knife they’re about to stab someone with is actually a prop?
If you get to the person who’s been told to “do this action convincingly” and you want them to double check all the safety work you’re doing it wrong. Their job isn’t making sure they’ve been given safe tools, it’s using safe tools to make someone that’s fake but convincing.
Everyone in the armoring company should be charged with murder … but Alec Baldwin did not put live rounds into a gun. He went into work, did his job, and because other people screwed up someone got shot. Maybe the industry itself needs to change but that shouldn’t be Alec Baldwin’s problem. That’s not justice.
But you’re right, and the management who kept ignoring problems is going to be tried here. It just so happens that the producer was also an actor and happened to be the one given a bad prop. Alec was the manager of everyone: he hired people, and decided they were doing a good enough job. After employees complained about safety problems, he ignored them. After people QUIT over those safety problems, he continued ignoring them. Alec the producer is the one on trial, not Alec the actor.
Thank you! I feel like I’ve never been able to get the full story!
Baldwin was in charge. He wasn’t just an Actor. He took several actions that made the set less safe that day.
He’s being charged because he was an executive producer not because he pulled the trigger
He’s being charged for pointing a gun at someone and pulling the trigger. Him being an executive is an argument against the “I was told it was unloaded” defense. NM law is clear on criminal negligence with a firearm and there is no movie production exemption. Being handed a gun by someone else who says it is safe does not negate liability under the law. His failures as a producer with prior safety lapses and incidents leading up to the tragedy are important as well, but at the end of the day he pulled the trigger and that’s what he is being charged for.
Executive producer typically means you are the money behind the project, not that you have hands-on control of the daily details.
And liability
EP credits can be given for any number of reasons and their impact on the project varies greatly.
Some do nothing and just put up some cash, some are involved in every action/word in the script and will always be on setn
Well my understanding is that he was an executive producer on the film, which is a leadership position that impacts decisions on hiring staff like armory/weapons consultants.
As an actor he’s probably not responsible but as EP he is .
There are 14 producers on this movie, and bdwin was not the executive producer according to IMDB. None of the other producers who were actually most likely responsible for those decisions are facing charges. It’s simply because Baldwin is an opponent of trump and the prosecutor wants to gain political influence and notoriety.
Exactly. If everyone involved was on trial, it might be reasonable. They happened to pick the guy Donnie hates.
He was pointing the gun at someone. That should never happen.
He was a producer on a set which was being mismanaged to the extent that a large proportion of the crew had just walked off the job over safety concerns.
It is very much his problem.
It’s amazing that people who are oblivious to the facts have such strong opinions defending a guy who shot and killed someone.
I think any reasoning person would say the answer is “yes”. Ultimately you are responsible for your own actions.
Think about it like this, remove the context of this being a movie. Your friend hands you a gun and says it’s not loaded, should you check before firing the gun at someone? Your friend hands you a bucket of “not acid” and tells you to throw it on someone. Do you check that it’s really not acid first?
It seems like the suggestion is that the film set is removing these base line responsibilities for our own actions and I don’t think that’s very reasonable.
There’s a specific reason the actors aren’t supposed to check the gun. They cannot do anything that might fuck with a prop and fucking kill someone. They are to only use the weapon they’ve been given as instructed. It’s the job of the master armorer to ensure that all weapons, prop or otherwise, are properly handled.
This is protocol so it’s clear who’s at fault when an incident like this happens because they can just trace chain of custody. If Baldwin had checked the gun or handled it in any way other than instructed, he would be liable.
By that logic, if someone drives a car with poor brakes and those defective brakes fail causing an accident, the driver is at fault.
In a commercial situation like a monster truck exhibition, there is president that the operator can be held liable for foreseeable mechanical failure that injures people.
This wasn’t a kid playing with his mom’s gun. It was a commercial production.
Hey I’ve seen that movie! Wait, it was a pickup truck in a parade and if I remember correctly, the driver got charged.
Say you’re an actor, and I hand you a revolver, assuring you that it is not loaded. The scene it’s involved in requires that the hammer is already pulled back (as the character in question is threatening someone at gunpoint).
Should you, the actor, check the chamber? With the hammer back and the cylinder locked, doing this would require a complex maneuver of blocking the hammer with your finger, PULLING THE TRIGGER, and then rotating the cylinder to look at the one that was chambered - then rotating it back, and re-cocking it.
Now imagine, being an actor that is a novice with revolvers, you mix up which spot you’re meant to block with your finger. If, as you suggest, there is any chance at all that there’s a live round in the chamber, aren’t you introducing further risk with this maneuver?
Sounds like a great argument for the actor first receiving a gun where the hammer is not pulled back.
If you get the gun in a state where safety checks cannot be done safely, someone has fucked up.
It’s far better for the actor to know how to cock a hammer, have them go through the safety checks to make sure everything checks out, and then cock the hammer.
Basic gun safety involves handling guns as if they were loaded, so a gun should only be passed to someone without the hammer cocked and also with the safety on, because the gun will be assumed to be loaded by whoever receives it, and handing someone a gun that’s loaded with the hammer cocked is a monumentally stupid idea.
Yes, you should that’s like the number one rule of handling actual firearms.
I feel like we are minimizing the fact they were using actual fully functional fire arms on a set which is absolutely not normal.
Is your friend a professional armorer whose job it is to keep everyone involved safe?
Even as an actor, if you are handed a replica of a deadly weapon you have a responsibility to make sure it is functioning properly and safe. And every actor should know that those firearms they get handed are most often real and can fire real ammunition. In such an environment, (particularly if you are also a producer - aka management), YOU are the final safety step before the director yells Action!
The “I didn’t know it was loaded” is never a legal excuse for anyone at any time.
Except that’s not how it works at all.
Proper procedure is for the prop master and armorer to be responsible for making sure the weapon is safe. They will then hand it off to whoever, and will loudly announce “cold gun”.
The gun can be handed to an assistant or the actor, if it is passed to an assistant first, when they hand it over to the actor they, too, must announce “cold gun”.
This lets everyone on set know that the gun has been verified safe by the armorer.
Baldwin was handed a gun, and the person handing it over loudly announced “cold gun”. He was then expected to treat it like it was not loaded, because he was loudly told.
The reason why you hire an armorer in the first place is because you don’t want your actors to think they know how to handle weapons. You want positive control of every weapon on set.
That broke down on the Rust set.
The story of how that broke down on the Rust set is actually quite interesting. It was a combination of nepotism (the armorer was the daughter of a famous armorer, and got the job through her dad’s connections) and the complete failure on the part of a prop company.
See, the live rounds were reloads, loaded into the exact same casings as the dummy rounds normally used. The reason the reloads were made was actually valid. A different armorer on a different film shoot made them to let the actors of that film get an idea of how the guns they were using would actually kick.
At the end of that film, the live rounds got co-mingled with the returned dummy rounds, and then those co-mingled rounds were rented out to the Rust production.
The armorer for Rust should have caught these rounds. They were not completely identical to the dummy rounds. But this was her second film, and she had never actually worked with live ammo.
When questioned by police after the shooting, she didn’t even know the brand name on the dummy rounds.
Anyway, she had prepped the gun for filming, and then the assistant director took it from her cart and handed it to Baldwin, announcing “cold gun”. The assistant director did not check the gun either, he just grabbed it and handed it off.
As a note, there were not supposed to be any live rounds, or even any blanks on set. Just dummy rounds.
The other failure here was actually sort of on the victims. Industry standards for filming scenes like that is to use a monitor, and not have anyone standing in the potential path of a bullet, even if there are no bullets. The cinematographer and director were both standing behind the camera. Mostly because setting up a monitor takes time, and they were under a bit of a crunch to get the scene filmed.
In the US, “I didn’t know it was loaded” is not a legal excuse. Try it in court yourself and see how far it gets you.
The VERY first rule about firearms is that 'All guns are treated as if loaded at all times". And you NEVER trust anyone when they tell you it’s unloaded. You check yourself to be sure. This includes a prop gun handed to you by a prop person who announces “cold gun!” It takes mere seconds to check it yourself. No excuses…
Your last paragraph shows even more negligence on the part of Baldwin. He broke another cardinal rule of gun safety by pointing an assumed unloaded gun at something he wasn’t intending to destroy or kill. And coupled with supposed rush to film, added to the complete breakdown of basic common sense firearms safety rules.
There was negligence all around that ended at Baldwin. And no one else gets away with that much negligence, (remember he was also a producer - The Boss), in a fatal “accident” and doesn’t get tried in court. Because Baldwin is famous and rich should not prevent his day in court.
You’re confusing the firing range for the movie set.
There are different rules, and in fact, there have been court cases saying that responsibility for the weapon being safe or not is completely on the armorer.
Baldwin was told “cold gun”. That’s how movie sets communicate a safe weapon. Full stop.
The great example is if an actor is supposed to throw acid on someone for a scene, do you expect the actor to check that it’s actually water? Or do you expect the person who is paid to check it to make sure?
Baldwin followed industry procedure of accepting a weapon that was declared cold. It was handed to him by the Assistant Director, the person normally tasked with ensuring safety on set.
Again “I didn’t know it was loaded” is not an acceptable excuse in a court of law when someone dies. And as a producer, Baldwin was also a boss of the movie. He also shares a responsibility to make sure competent people are hired to do dangerous jobs. He also broke your industry protocol when he pointed that gun directly at other people when he pulled the trigger during a break in filming. He very much appears to culpable for a good amount of the negligence that got someone killed.
He needs to be charged and go through the legal process like anyone else would be, (hence the involuntary homicide charge). He should get no pass because he’s a rich and famous actor. If the court says it wasn’t or was his fault, then fine. The evidence was heard and the court rendered a legal decision and it’s done.
It was loaded with dummy rounds, and one real round.
Can you tell the difference with a glance? No? And you expect actors to be able to tell?
He wasn’t just fucking around with the gun, either, he was working with the director and cinematographer for a camera test.
The three of them were walking through the motions that would be used for the actual scene, complete with costumes and props. They were trying to get the positioning and lighting right.
I don’t know why this is so hard to understand for you.
And again, he doesn’t need to go through any process, because the precedent here is clear. The armorer is the person with the full responsibility for making sure that the weapons on set are safe. She was the one who loaded the gun.
If this happened in any other state, Baldwin would never have been charged. But it’s New Mexico, and Baldwin made fun of Trump. The prosecutor is trying to make a name for himself by going after someone Trump hates.
Yes, I can. And anyone who is going to handling dangerous items needs to be trained in properly handling them safely at all times. Even a complete novice can easily tell the difference just by looking, particularly after being shown how - it ain’t rocket surgery. And it takes mere seconds to make that check. Being an “actor” is NOT a valid excuse. Job safety is a real thing. And it runs from the top down to the end users. And Baldwin failed the safety part on two counts - being a boss on the movie by making or allowing a bad hire for an important safety job and as the end user.
He STILL broke a rule about safety on the set. Don’t point guns directly at people - even movies sets have rules about that according to you.
And yes, the set armorer has primary responsibility for firearms safety on set. But that responsibility doesn’t end there - it continues down the line of EVERYONE who is involved with the scene.
Nor do I understand the fear of Baldwin being charged. If, as you say, there is precedent for his innocence, then his money and fame should guarantee a not guilty verdict.
As far as the “political witch hunt” goes - maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. That’s another topic IMO. Perhaps those other states that wouldn’t press charges against a famous actor just value the money that a movie production brings in more than the life of any person. The entertainment industry as a whole gets by with a lot of shady shit that simply would not fly in any other industry. And all because of the money it brings in. California is probably the worst transgressor of this. There is billions of dollars riding on looking the other way in Hollywood. And that’s NOT a political statement - that’s just a lot of cold hard cash talking.
The live round was loaded into a Starline Brass casing. It had the Starline Brass logo on it.
So a complete novice would look at it and the other Starline Brass logos on the dummy rounds and say, they all match, so they must be dummy rounds, just like all the other dummy rounds on set, because until Baldwin pulled that trigger, he and everyone else on set would have said that there were zero live rounds on set.
Baldwin wasn’t trained to tell the difference between a live round and a dummy round. The armorer was (saposed to be) trained to do that.
As for you claiming to be able to tell at a glance, that’s also a lie.
The only way to tell is to hold the round up and shake it. A dummy round has a BB in place of the powder. It will make a rattling noise when shaken.
Dummy rounds for movie sets will sometimes even come with a fake primer, because they’re props and meant to look real.
The way you tell is by looking for the logo, and shaking them. That’s it.
The Set was cold, i.e. there were not supposed to be any live rounds at all. Baldwin was handed his prop, and told it was a cold gun, This would have felt like a formality, only done to keep up the practice. Because there were no live rounds, and the prop was not loaded with blanks. It was loaded with dummies.
Except someone on a previous film had reloaded some dummy rounds with live ammo, and some of those rounds made it back to the prop company and were re-issued to the Rust set.
https://variety.com/2021/film/news/rust-investigators-live-rounds-alec-baldwin-1235122384/
We’ve known where the rounds came from for years now. This is purely political theater, because Baldwin made fun of Trump.
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Why spout off something that you have absolutely zero knowledge about? Like what purpose does that serve?