Prosecutors could face long odds convincing a jury that actor Alec Baldwin is criminally liable for the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during the filming of the Western Rust, legal experts have said.
New Mexico District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies on Thursday said her office would file involuntary manslaughter charges against the 30 Rock actor and the film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez Reed, following more than a year of investigation into the shooting.
Baldwin, 64, has said he was told the gun did not contain live rounds when it was handed to him and that he did not pull the trigger.
Photo: Reuters
His attorney on Thursday called the decision to criminally charge the actor a “terrible miscarriage of justice.”
Legal experts said they were doubtful that a jury would convict Baldwin over the shooting, which occurred during a rehearsal on the set in October 2021, if the evidence shows it was an accident that occurred despite safety precautions in place to prevent it.
“It’s a very aggressive charging decision, and the defense has a strong case,” said personal injury attorney and former prosecutor Neama Rahmani, who is not involved in the Rust case.
Carmack-Altwies’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The most serious charge prosecutors are pursuing — which carries five years in jail — would require them to show beyond a reasonable doubt that Baldwin was more than just negligent.
Legal experts said this would likely require proving his behavior was reckless, or “an extreme departure from the care a reasonable person would exercise in similar circumstances.”
However, Carmack-Altwies said that “every person that handles a gun has a duty to make sure ... that it is not going to fire a projectile and kill someone.”
Defense lawyer John Anderson disagreed, saying criminal liability is a “stretch,” unless prosecutors “can show it was absolutely reckless in terms of the level of safety on set.”
Anderson, a former New Mexico attorney who is not involved in the case, said that “it sounds like they had multiple safety checks built in.”
Experts interviewed by Reuters could not cite another instance in which criminal charges stemmed from an accidental shooting death on a film set.
When Bruce Lee’s (李小龍) son, Brandon Lee (李國豪), was fatally shot by an improperly inspected gun on the set of The Crow in 1993, prosecutors said it was an accident caused by negligence and declined to bring charges.
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