Rust trial prosecutors will reportedly drop charges against Alec Baldwin [UPDATED]
Involuntary manslaughter charges against Alec Baldwin and Hannah Gutierrez-Reed are on the way out
Aux News Alec Baldwin![Rust trial prosecutors will reportedly drop charges against Alec Baldwin [UPDATED]](https://img.pastemagazine.com/wp-content/avuploads/2023/04/14234249/b299bca315ba554f6976a23d5285ee57.jpg)
[Update 4/20 5:24 pm]: Charges against Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed will also be dropped, per The Hollywood Reporter.
Original Story: In an unsurprising turn in the Rust tragedy that left cinematographer Halyna Hutchins dead, special prosecutors will reportedly drop the charges against Alec Baldwin. The Emmy winner had previously been charged with involuntary manslaughter after a firearm held by Baldwin misfired and killed Hutchins. Baldwin faced an 18-month prison sentence for involuntary manslaughter, plus charges of enhancement for using a gun, which carries a five-year mandatory minimum. However, set armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed’s charges have not been dropped.
Deadline writes that special prosecutors Kari Morrissey and Jason Lewis are “expected to be filing paperwork soon, perhaps even today,” dismissing the charges “without prejudice.”
“We are pleased with the decision to dismiss the case against Alec Baldwin and we encourage a proper investigation into the facts and circumstances of this tragic accident,” said Baldwin’s attorneys, Luke Nikas and Alex Spiro.
While Baldwin’s celebrity made the actor a target for the prosecutors, legal experts never expected him to stand trial because he likely didn’t know a real bullet was in the gun. Moreover, there was simply no motive that would lead anyone to believe Baldwin would have fired that gun had known there was a bullet in the chamber, James J. Brosnahan, Senior Of Counsel at the law firm of Morrison Foerster, told The A.V. Club back in January. Brosnahan was retained as lead trial counsel for the defense in the case involving Brandon Lee, who was shot and killed by a gun fired by actor Michael Masse on the set of The Crow in 1993.
“Look at it from the defendant’s standpoint; he is a famous man and a movie actor of considerable talent and has been for years,” Brosnahan said. “Let’s assume that he would like to have more, more roles and things. The nature of the crime is that there’s no bank robbery here. The atmosphere of the case, and if his lawyer marshals the mood of the case, is this a terrible accident. That’s what I think. Things happen. I can almost hear the good defense lawyer arguing that you know, things happen in the world. Things happen. It doesn’t mean anybody is guilty of anything.”
45 Comments
So this won’t be going to trail?
I don’t understand the legal system in New Mexico. Shouldn’t there be prosecutors for the whole jurisdiction instead of just the cattle trails?
New Mexico Prosecutors Say Happy Trails to Alec Baldwin
There’s been a selection of puns on that typo here. A real trail mix, if you will.
“Things happen. I can almost hear the good defense lawyer arguing that you know, things happen in the world. Things happen. It doesn’t mean anybody is guilty of anything.” I have to agree with a bit little bit of squeamishness. But if anyone tries that shit with teens getting shot ringing the wrong doorbell or opening the wrong car door, I will smite them with extra help by Dad
Nah, that dude’s going to jail. You can’t open up on someone for ringing your doorbell.
You can if you’re a million years old and plead Demetia as a defense, which his lawyers will undoubtably do.
You have more faith than I do in the system these days. As a Floridian, I feel pretty confident I could hurl a grenade at people walking along the sidewalk in front of my house and not only avoid prison, but probably use the incident to launch a campaign for Senate. Missouri’s probably not quite so bad, but it is where that couple pulled guns on passing protesters and got off with a slap on the wrist (later commuted to a gentle caress of the wrist by a Republican governor). I’m not sure that any verified Republican voter is ever going to get charged with murder again, or if they somehow do, they’ll just be automatically pardoned.
Well, as long as they have darker skin than you do.
Death of a Black Salesman.
Just in this week: wrong doorbell, wrong driveway, wrong car, all things in my almost 50 years I’ve done and never feared it would amount to more than a quick explanation and a laugh. The artificial fear that’s been produced by right wing media fear mongering is astounding.
From an outsider’s perspective, Baldwin was most likely charged because if he was not, there could have been backlash about rich celebrity getting special treatment. By charging him, the local prosecutor was covering their ass, while the special prosecutor doesn’t have to worry about the local voters and how they might react to whatever allegation a tabloid could find in their trash.
To me, it was pretty clear from the beginning that the prosecutor was looking for their 15 minutes of fame in charging Baldwin, who should have never been charged to begin with. Instead, they ended up looking like a bunch of incompetent dummies.
IIRC this was also a relatively new prosecutor, who needed to be seen “doing something” right out of the chute.
The previous special prosecutor is also a state legislator, so she too was interested in how she looked to voters.
Yup.https://apnews.com/article/alec-baldwin-shooting-special-prosecutor-5b708f60281b86229ceff441fcbb64e9https://deadline.com/2023/03/rust-special-prosecutors-named-district-attorney-steps-aside-1235313012/The whole in thing in that NM county DA has been a shitshow of trying to make an example of a famous “liberal.”
I took it more as a “damned if you do”, “damned if you don’t” and “damned if you don’t” could have been more damning. There are a lot of rich celebrities who live or have a home in Santa Fe, but here are a lot more voters who are not as rich and it’d be easy for a “celebrities get special treatment” narrative to take hold.
Gutierrez-Reed too? I did call it earlier this month when the AD pled out that he might end up with the harshest sentence of anyone, but it’s still a shame. Even if Hutchins was ultimately just an unlucky victim of bad circumstance, it’s still circumstances that existed because of more than one person’s negligence. It seems like the prosecution and the DA bit off too much by trying to nail Baldwin and ended up losing the whole thing.
She definitely is at fault, along with the 1st AD
Yeah I don’t get that one. Baldwin’s obnoxious but I don’t think he’s at actual legal fault here. But the armorer, whose entire job is avoiding this kind of thing? Seems like there would be SOME sort of applicable negligence charge here.
There are too many past examples of on set accidents where the actors were found to not be liable for there to be any chance of charges sticking against Baldwin. If they’d wanted to charge Baldwin with all the producers for their role in general on set safety that would be one thing, but every set report indicates that as an actor, Baldwin had every reason to believe he was following all onset rules and doing nothing negligent.
I assumed that his liability was less in his role as actor and more in his role as producer.
Not based on the charges. He was never charged for any lack of oversight on set and neither were any of the producers. He was solely charged as the actor who fired the gun.
Once you lose the chance to own a lib, the thrill is gone.
I am very disappointed with this. She is probably the most guilty person of them all and yet she’ll get nothing? The AD is guilty as well but she was supposed to check the weapons. Well fuck.
“It seems like the prosecution and the DA bit off too much by trying to nail Baldwin and ended up losing the whole thing.”This is exactly what happened. They overcharged (remember they initially tried to include an enhancement that wasn’t passed until well after the incident) to get revenge for Trump and the whole case fell apart.
Gutierrez-Reed too?No, this writer apparently can’t read the stuff he links to. The charges against Gutierrez-Reed haven’t been dropped currently.
It should be noted that the charges were dropped “without prejudice,” which means they can be refilled later. That’s one way prosecutors get around the requirement for a “speedy” trial when they realize they may need more time to prepare a case. On the other hand, it can also be a face-saving move when they don’t want to admit they totally screwed up.
No surprise. It was an utterly ridiculous charge, but the prosecutors were so scared they’d look like they were giving special treatment to a celebrity, that they charged him anyway.
Oh look, someone with some common sense finally decided to step in. I’ve said this since the beginning, he shouldn’t have been charged. The armorer is at fault.
Yes, this case always seemed like a stretch.
Called it.
Baldwin faced an 18-month prison sentence for involuntary manslaughter,
plus charges of enhancement for using a gun, which carries a five-year
mandatory minimum. Except, IIRC, the enhancement was passed AFTER the Rust incident.NM should be embarrassed.
And weren’t the enhancements dropped a couple of months ago for that exact reason?
It was all thanks to the quiet wisdom of a rural juror.
I wonder if it will cause some vigorous discussion in Baldwin’s home city, New York. Some urban fervour, if you will.
All the same, someone was killed.
This is a huge embarrassment for the DA and the ADAs involved in this case. They likely would have had a better leg to stand on with Gutierrez-Reed if they had not charged Baldwin. Precedent was always going to make the charges against Baldwin incredibly difficult to pursue and SAG-AFTRA was very much going to be behind protecting an actor from being responsible for safety failings on a set. It was very clear that the other witness statements suggested Baldwin was told multiple times the gun was safe/cold and was told by the director and Hutchins to point it where he did. Baldwin wasn’t charged for being a producer. He was only charged for being the actor on set. That was never going to fly.
“Would the phrase ‘shit happens’ be considered insensitive? It would? Okay. Things happen in the world.”
[Update 4/20 5:24 pm]: Charges against Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed will also be dropped, per The Hollywood Reporter.How bad can you be at reporting things when the link to journalism contradicts what you’re saying it does? That HR report says the complete opposite. The charges against Gutierrez-Reed have not been dropped.
From the bottom of the THR article:April 20, 5:27 pm. Correction: A previous version of this story relying on information from Gutierrez-Reed’s attorney incorrectly stated that charges against her will be dropped.
On the one hand Baldwin is just an actor and actors have no responsibility to know anything. On the other is the excuse “I didn’t know it was loaded” that is used too often. It was clearly not a simple accident – they are making a movie about how guns are used to solve problems using operating firearms, glamorizing the use of guns as lethal devices. And yet, not any bit of care to understand how guns work? I don’t have a gun, I don’t want a gun, I think the 2nd Amendment radicals are a pox on the country, but I still know that anywhere else a gun is handed from one person to the other it is incumbent on the person accepting the gun to also accept responsibility for the readiness of the gun to fire. I don’t care if a person says a gun isn’t loaded when they hand it to me. I would check for myself. This country loves its guns too much to put the slightest effort into ensuring everyone handling them is held responsible for that handling. If manslaughter is too much, there must be some other charge sufficient that no actor will ever again simply trust the safety of a gun without looking for themselves. It would not relieve whoever told them the gun was unloaded of responsibility for an adverse outcome.
I don’t care if a person says a gun isn’t loaded when they hand it to me. I would check for myself. Good advice for day to day life. Bad advice for a film set. Actor opens up a cold gun to ‘check’ the ammo, that things going back to the armourer and square one. Rinse and repeat until the actor gets the message and knocks that off.
well that’s ass backwards, sheesh.
“there must be some other charge sufficient that no actor will ever again simply trust the safety of a gun without looking for themselves.”No, there doesn’t need to be. Because that’s not the actor’s job. There IS someone whose job it is, and the actor’s job is to follow that person’s instructions. For a bunch of very, very good reasons.