A judge in New Mexico has ruled that actor Alec Baldwin will be prosecuted for shooting a cinematographer on a movie set. rust. In an order Friday, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer denied Baldwin's attorney's motion to dismiss the indictment.
Baldwin is therefore scheduled to go on trial in July on charges of involuntary manslaughter. Nearly three years ago, while rehearsing a scene for a Western film at a ranch outside Santa Fe, Baldwin held a prop gun loaded with live ammunition. The Colt .45 revolver exploded, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injuring director Joel Souza.
Baldwin, who is also a producer on the film, has pleaded not guilty and is not responsible for Hutchins' death. Shortly after the shooting, he told ABC News he had “no idea” how a real bullet ended up on the set of his film, but “I didn't pull the trigger.”
Last March, a jury found Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the film's armorer, guilty of involuntary manslaughter and negligent use of a firearm. She is currently serving an 18-month prison sentence.
The New Mexico Department of Environmental Quality's Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued a citation and fined Rust Movie Productions for failures that led to Hutchins' “avoidable death.”
Criminal case against Alec Baldwin
The high-profile criminal case against Alec Baldwin has had many twists and turns. Baldwin was first indicted in 2023, but New Mexico's case against him has run into several obstacles. Baldwin's lawyers fought to fire special prosecutor Andrea Reeve, a New Mexico congresswoman. She withdrew from the case. So did the district attorney who brought the case after downgrading the charges against the actor. (Baldwin had initially been sentenced to at least five years in prison under a “gun enhancement” statute, but his legal team pointed out that the law did not go into effect in New Mexico until after the fatal incident. rust filming.)
In April 2023, the charges against Baldwin were dismissed when two new special prosecutors were assigned. In October, they presented the case to a grand jury to decide whether he should be criminally charged. By January, a jury agreed to convict him.
But last week, Baldwin's attorneys, Alex Spiro and Luke Nikas, asked Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer to dismiss his charges. They claimed the state's special prosecutor unfairly stacked the deck against Baldwin during the grand jury hearing, omitting key testimony and interfering with witnesses multiple times.
“She doesn’t interrupt anyone who says, ‘I don’t like Alec Baldwin.’ That’s for sure. It’s always one way,” Spiro said.
Spiro argued that the “overzealous” special prosecutor acted in “malice” by preventing defense witnesses from testifying and presenting contradictory testimony.
Meanwhile, Special Prosecutor Kari Morrissey took a defensive stance with Judge Sommer. She denied doing anything nefarious before the grand jury.
“Everything he’s telling you right now is a complete misrepresentation,” Morrissey said of Spiro. “I withheld no information from the grand jury.”
She said she planned to present several defense witnesses if grand jurors called for testimony, but denied the testimony was contradictory.
“I hope the court understands that all I tried to do was try to get the most accurate information in front of the grand jury,” Morrissey explained. She defended the testimony of witnesses at the grand jury trial, including that of veteran film armorer Bryan Carpenter, who spoke about the industry's weapons practices. Work.” She said Carpenter testified at the Gutierrez-Reed trial that the armorer was responsible for gun safety, and testified before the grand jury that “if an actor gets his hands on a firearm, he's responsible for it.”
Morrissey said that according to safety protocols on film sets, “anyone holding a gun must not point it at anyone. The person holding the gun must have their finger off the trigger. The person pointing, the person holding the gun must not point the gun at their intended target.” “You have to know what the goal was, and that’s something Mr. Baldwin failed to do, and that information was properly presented to the grand jury in this case.”
On Friday, Judge Sommer allowed the grand jury's decision to stand.
web of lawsuits
A complex web of lawsuits has grown since the deadly shootings in October 2021.
that much rust The crew filed several lawsuits against each other. Serge Svetnoy, the film's director and gaffer, sued Baldwin, Guttierez-Reed and several others involved in the production. Then script supervisor Mamie Mitchell also sued Baldwin and other producers and crew members. In 2022, Baldwin filed a lawsuit against the film's first assistant director, armorer, prop master, and ammunition supplier, alleging negligence.
Halyna Hutchins' family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against him and his co-producers, claiming their cost-cutting and reckless behavior on set caused Halyna Hutchins' death. As part of the agreement, Hutchins' widower Matthew was named executive producer on the film, which resumed and completed filming last year. There is no release date yet.
Hutchins' sister and parents also filed a civil lawsuit against Baldwin, his co-producers and some members of the production team from their home in Ukraine.