Alec Baldwin charged with involuntary manslaughter over death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Alec Baldwin charged with involuntary manslaughter over death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins

Actor Alec Baldwin will be charged with involuntary manslaughter over the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the film Rust, the New Mexico District Attorney’s office has said.

Ms Hutchins died shortly after being injured by a gunshot during setup for a scene at the ranch on the outskirts of Santa Fe on October 21, 2021.

Baldwin was pointing a pistol at Ms Hutchins when the gun went off, killing her and injuring the director, Joel Souza.

Both Baldwin and the film’s armourer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed will each be charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter over the death of Ms Hutchins on the film’s set.

Assistant director David Halls has signed a plea agreement for the charge of negligent use of a deadly weapon, the District Attorney’s office said. No charges will be filed specific to the non-fatal shooting of Mr Souza.
“After a thorough review of the evidence and the laws of the state of New Mexico, I have determined that there is sufficient evidence to file criminal charges against Alec Baldwin and other members of the Rust film crew,” District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies said.
“On my watch, no-one is above the law, and everyone deserves justice.”

Baldwin and Gutierrez-Reed will be “charged in the alternative” with the two counts of manslaughter, meaning that a jury would decide not simply if they were guilty, but under which definition of involuntary manslaughter they were guilty, the DA’s office said.
The first charge can be referred to as involuntary manslaughter and requires proof of underlying negligence.
This charge also includes the misdemeanour charge of negligent use of a firearm, which would likely merge as a matter of law.
The second charge is involuntary manslaughter in the commission of a lawful act, which requires proof that there was more than simple negligence involved in a death.
Under New Mexico law, both charges are a fourth-degree felony and are punishable by up to 18 months in jail and a $5,000 (£4,000) fine.
The second charge includes a firearm enhancement, or added mandatory penalty, which makes the crime punishable by a mandatory five years in jail.

“If any one of these three people, Alec Baldwin, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed or David Halls, had done their job, Halyna Hutchins would be alive today. It’s that simple,” said special prosecutor Andrea Reeb.
“The evidence clearly shows a pattern of criminal disregard for safety on the Rust film set.
“In New Mexico, there is no room for film sets that don’t take our state’s commitment to gun safety and public safety seriously.”

Baldwin’s lawyer, Luke Nikas of Quinn Emanuel, said: “This decision distorts Halyna Hutchins’ tragic death and represents a terrible miscarriage of justice.
“Mr Baldwin had no reason to believe there was a live bullet in the gun – or anywhere on the movie set.
“He relied on the professionals with whom he worked, who assured him the gun did not have live rounds. We will fight these charges, and we will win.”

Baldwin, who was also a producer on the film, has denied responsibility for the shooting and has sued crew members for negligence.

The actor - known for his roles in 30 Rock and The Hunt for Red October - maintains he was told the gun was safe.
In his lawsuit, Baldwin said that while working on camera angles with Ms Hutchins during rehearsal for a scene, he pointed the gun in her direction and pulled back and released the hammer of the gun, which discharged.
New Mexico’s Office of the Medical Investigator determined the shooting was an accident following the completion of an autopsy and a review of law enforcement reports.

New Mexico’s Occupational Health and Safety Bureau has given the maximum fine against Rust Movie Productions.

Testimony had heard that production managers took limited or no action to address two misfires of blank ammunition on set prior to the fatal shooting.
Rust Movie Productions continues to challenge the basis of a $137,000 fine by regulators who say production managers on the set failed to follow standard industry protocols for firearms safety.

[Crazedwraith]

Seems fair but why are they both being charged with two counts of manslaughter? Meaning four counts in total? Only one person was killed weren't they?

[Gandalf]

Seems fair but why are they both being charged with two counts of manslaughter? Meaning four counts in total? Only one person was killed weren't they?

Weirdly, it reads as though the district attorney is charging them with both so the jury can pick under which charge they're guilty.

[Solauren]

From what I understand, there are some districts where there are multiple ways to apply a charge (i.e Involuntary Manslaughter), so they do, and they let the jury figure out which, if any, the defendant is guilty of.

[Solauren]

Also, unless there is video of him checking to see if the gun was loaded, and then he put it down and someone loaded it without him noticing (or switching the gun), he's pretty much confessed already.

Before you point a weapon at anything you are not planning to kill or destroy, you check if it's loaded or not. And if you don't want to destroy something, you damn well unload it. Period.

[bilateralrope]

We need to remember that Baldwin was in charge of that production. A production where an experienced armorer who had always wanted to work on a western took one look at the tasks being asked of him and turned down the role. This was not the first time that a firearm that had been declared cold had accidentally discharged during production. The first time was only a blank and nobody was injured. But there was no investigation into how it had happened. That was the main reason why the union camera crew walked and got replaced with non-union camera operators.

That negligence is on Baldwin even if it was someone else holding the gun when the shooting happened.

[Broomstick]

Also, unless there is video of him checking to see if the gun was loaded, and then he put it down and someone loaded it without him noticing (or switching the gun), he's pretty much confessed already.

Before you point a weapon at anything you are not planning to kill or destroy, you check if it's loaded or not. And if you don't want to destroy something, you damn well unload it. Period.

The problem is that in film and TV the circumstances and rules are different. For that reason, there are published industry protocols for productions that cover everything from procedures to security to training for anyone involved in any way. Shootings/injuries/deaths by firearms is VERY rare in the industry, indeed, you're more likely to be killed by a helicopter than a gun on a Hollywood set, despite firearms being a very common component of such productions. More and more CGI is being used to avoid even the minimal risks that have been present for decades.

There are times in TV/film productions when someone DOES point a gun or other weapon at someone they have zero intention of harming because that's what the script requires. Hence, lots and lots of rules and procedures.

Which were not followed on the set of Rust.

Arguably, if those industry standards had been applied, and prior violations on set taken seriously, this accident would never have happened. Which is why I'm OK with charges and this going to trial.

The armorer strikes me as having been careless and incompetent.

Baldwin should have learned to check a weapon himself, as apparently many other actors have learned to do, but he didn't.

I don't think anyone intended anyone to get hurt but there was carelessness and negligence involved and that leaves the parties open to legal consequences.

[bilateralrope]

The armorer strikes me as having been careless and incompetent.

Also inexperienced and overworked. This was her first time working as armorer and she was also working as prop master. When those being combined roles is why that experienced armorer I mentioned earlier turned down working on Rust.

Her part of the trial will be interesting when it gets into why procedures weren't followed.

[Zwinmar]

Honestly the production standards should require that only non-firing replicas be used for scenes like that. There is no reason for a real weapon to be on set and used in that manner. These people are ridiculously over paid and you can get a replica for a fraction of the cost of a real one.

[LadyTevar]

Also, unless there is video of him checking to see if the gun was loaded, and then he put it down and someone loaded it without him noticing (or switching the gun), he's pretty much confessed already.

Before you point a weapon at anything you are not planning to kill or destroy, you check if it's loaded or not. And if you don't want to destroy something, you damn well unload it. Period.

From what I understand, ACTORS are NOT ALLOWED to do that. They are not to make any changes to the weapon once it's handed to them, even if it's just checking to see if it's loaded.
He is to trust the Armorer did their job.

Baldwin is being charged not as the Actor who shot, but as the Executive Producer who did not prevent the killing on the set.

[bilateralrope]

Honestly the production standards should require that only non-firing replicas be used for scenes like that. There is no reason for a real weapon to be on set and used in that manner. These people are ridiculously over paid and you can get a replica for a fraction of the cost of a real one.

The big problem with Rust was that there is was too much cost cutting to follow standard Hollywood gun safety procedures. Proposing another safety rule, one that increases production costs, would not have helped.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Honestly the production standards should require that only non-firing replicas be used for scenes like that. There is no reason for a real weapon to be on set and used in that manner. These people are ridiculously over paid and you can get a replica for a fraction of the cost of a real one.

The big problem with Rust was that there is was too much cost cutting to follow standard Hollywood gun safety procedures. Proposing another safety rule, one that increases production costs, would not have helped.

There's also no reason for there to be so much as a single live bullet to be within a country mile of the set, never mind how it got mixed in with the rest of the ammo.

[bilateralrope]

Honestly the production standards should require that only non-firing replicas be used for scenes like that. There is no reason for a real weapon to be on set and used in that manner. These people are ridiculously over paid and you can get a replica for a fraction of the cost of a real one.

The big problem with Rust was that there is was too much cost cutting to follow standard Hollywood gun safety procedures. Proposing another safety rule, one that increases production costs, would not have helped.

There's also no reason for there to be so much as a single live bullet to be within a country mile of the set, never mind how it got mixed in with the rest of the ammo.

True. But that live ammo only managed to get into the gun, and remain unnoticed until it was too late, because of lax gun handling.

We will probably never find out who took the live ammo to set. So they have managed to escape justice.

[Solauren]

Hell, why do you need real (or working) guns on set anyway? CGI can handle most of the effects of things like spent bullet casings or discharge fire.

[Broomstick]

Real guns are still cheaper than CGI. It was a low-budget production.

Some of this is legacy from before CGI was a thing.

But, honestly, it is extremely rare for a shooting to occur on a movie or TV set. The biggest problem here is that the industry-standard safety protocols weren't followed. That's why there has been a mass walk-off of crew from the set before the day of the shooting - the perception the production wasn't safe. And that turned out to be the case.

[bilateralrope]

Hell, why do you need real (or working) guns on set anyway? CGI can handle most of the effects of things like spent bullet casings or discharge fire.

I've seen a few people say it has something to do with getting the actor to react realistically to the recoil. Because blanks have recoil while CGI doesn't.

Also, gun flares are a light source. Which makes it really complicated to try and simulate them with CGI if the rest of the lighting is dim enough.

Probably cheaper to just enforce the current procedures.

[Formless]

Yeah, there are a bunch of advantages of real (blank firing) guns over CGI. There are times when CGI is appropriate (like long shots), but even then you still need the actor to hold some kind of prop. The weight of real guns can be shocking to someone who has only ever held plastic replicas (ask me how I know); they are, after all, primarily made of steel. Thus an actor handed an airsoft replica will tend to handle it in a way that clearly lacks "gravity", as it were.

Also, when watching season 1 of The Expanse, I could tell they were using airsoft replicas right away because of the bore size of the gunbarrels. A .17 caliber airsoft BB needs a very small hole at the business end, noticeably smaller than the more common .22 or .30 caliber weapons we are lead to believe the Martian military is supposed to be using in that show. I don't know how many inexperienced viewers would have picked up on it, but I suspect that I wasn't the only one, and that even people whose only experience with guns is with fictional video game and movie guns might have noticed something uncanny about the props. Or have outright recognized the airsoft models they were using.

An actor with a non-functional replica might also use it in an unsafe manner when that is out of character for their character. Which is fine if you are playing a character like the Joker, but a John Wick, police officer, or experienced cowboy? No. The blank firing weapon forces them to treat it with greater respect precisely because people have been injured or killed by them.

The recoil is also indeed an issue. You can tell when an actor is faking it because you can tell where the movement is coming from. An actor will move the gun from the wrist or elbow, whereas a gun moves itself and the user is going to try to resist that movement as best they can. With a modern semi-auto pistol, the CGI will look decent enough because the ergonomics are designed to push the gun back into the shooter's palm rather than letting it "jump" into the air, but period revolvers were instead designed to roll upward in the hand. This puts the hammer in position for your thumb to re-cock it for the next shot, but this motion is quite difficult to simulate without shooting an actual blank through an actual gun.

In other words, a lot of these things are basically enforced method acting caused by the prop itself. That's a good thing, but you have to have safety procedures on set and they need enforcement.

There's also things like surface details to get right, and for a low budget production, buying a real gun would be much cheaper than making a prop that looks correct.

There are props made to specifically be non-guns, i.e. they can't chamber a real cartridge and instead ignite some flash paper charge instead. These are already used in film and television for scenes where the actors have to discharge the weapons in such close proximity to one another that a blank would be too dangerous, especially indoors. These have a lot of similar tradeoffs because the manufacturers have to tiptoe around trademarks of the real gun makers, though they solve other issues that both real guns and CGI guns have (like getting the muzzle flash right when CGI has trouble with that due to reflections being difficult). Often they get away with looking unrealistic because the scene is shot in a way where you only see the gun from bad angles or very briefly. But its another expense to buy one, and I don't know if there are enough cowboy movies shot anymore that the companies who make them make old timey revolver lookalikes.

And really, that brings us to the main issue. A low budget production is going to feel pressured to cut costs wherever they can, and the prop department might look like a really good place to do so. CGI might also be something they want to limit because it costs more than people think. But you can't afford to cut costs where safety is involved. Baldwin cut costs where safety was involved.

[The_Saint]

...snip...

To continue on with what Formless said, if you're running a big production with lots of resources and quality armourers then you might likely have access to all the above mentioned types of firearms (live firing, blank firing, non firing, airsoft, flashguns, rubber/plastic non guns) to use as and where appropriate.

If you're running a production on the cheap then you likely opted for the cheapest option of hiring the bare minimum (a live or blank firing weapon) and just use armourer controls (ie don't load it, security and separation of ammunition) for safety.



On a personal note having worked on productions in my country that involved firearms I've seen director/producer attitudes towards firearms safety that varied from eye-rolling to calling a halt to all actor/staff movements while firearms were moving. (Mind you the latter production staff went from knowing nothing to a quite a bit about black powder firearms).

[Solauren]

Snip

Then film the actual firing/shooting using a green screen on a firearms range.
Do the 'one set' ones with props, and edit.

[Formless]

...Or they could save the money spent to digitally reinsert an actor who was already on set and just do the shot with proper safety protocols in place. Again, CGI isn't the solution, most of your favorite police procedurals are somehow able to shoot hundreds of episodes of television involving prop guns without a single onset accident involving the firearms.

Do you know anything at all about digital effects? Its really not that simple, because the muzzle flash is still a light source! You can't just appeal to greenscreen technology without knowing how it works. CGI is only one kind of digital effect. Green screening is another, and they have more in common than you seem to realize.

[Lord Revan]

And the thing people tend to pretty much always forgot, CGI is easy and cheap but looks like it, Good CGI that doesn't draw you out of the movie/series right away is neither easy or cheap.

Yes there's a lot of tutorials of how to make CGI effects but the thing is that those tutorials still won't make you be able to make professional level CGI effects with a home PC in few hours. There's a difference what's acceptable for a low budget indy productions made by essentially amateurs and what's acceptable for a full professional productions (even low budget ones).

And what's hardest to get right is lighting and movement.

this image took me days to get the lighting right and it's a still and not that realistic.

[bilateralrope]

Snip

Then film the actual firing/shooting using a green screen on a firearms range.
Do the 'one set' ones with props, and edit.

Then you have all the expense and difficulty of matching all the lighting on the actor on the green screen to the real set. Even before you get to the problem of the muzzle flash being a light source that you've got to add to the real set.

Or you could just stick to the safety protocols that have worked for decades with real firearms.

[Solauren]

I seem to have fallen for the 'hollywood makes the tech look easy' trick. And I used to spend time lecturing people on that. My apologies on that.

Even at that, since Rust was already lowballing everything, so even if CGI was a magic bullet (pun intended) it wouldn't have mattered.

[Lord Revan]

I seem to have fallen for the 'hollywood makes the tech look easy' trick. And I used to spend time lecturing people on that. My apologies on that.

Even at that, since Rust was already lowballing everything, so even if CGI was a magic bullet (pun intended) it wouldn't have mattered.

No offence taken it's very easy to fall to that trick, I mean even people who know how to use the tech fall to that sometimes.

After all when you do something for a living you know all the ways and short cuts that make thing sort of do what you want and also you know what it's good at and what it's not good at so you don't try to use for something that's easier/cheaper to do with an other method.

[Zwinmar]

StorySANTA FE, N.M. — Prosecutors in New Mexico plan to drop an involuntary manslaughter charge against Alec Baldwin in the fatal 2021 shooting of a cinematographer on the set of the Western film “Rust," Baldwin's attorneys said Thursday...