Alec Baldwin Will Be Charged With Involuntary Manslaughter in ‘Rust’ Killing
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The actor Alec Baldwin will be charged with involuntary manslaughter for handling the gun that discharged on the set of “Rust,” killing its cinematographer, as will the movie’s armorer, who loaded the gun, prosecutors in New Mexico announced on Thursday.
Prosecutors said they would charge Mr. Baldwin with two counts of involuntary manslaughter, saying that he had a duty to ensure the gun and the ammunition were properly checked and that he should never have pointed it at anyone. “You should not point a gun at someone that you’re not willing to shoot,” the district attorney for Santa Fe County, Mary Carmack-Altwies, said in an interview. “That goes to basic safety standards.”
The criminal charges were a remarkable development in the career of Mr. Baldwin, 64, who has been a household name for decades — a leading man in films who hosted the Oscars and played Jack Donaghy in “30 Rock” and former President Donald J. Trump on “Saturday Night Live.”
Mr. Baldwin has long denied culpability for the “Rust” shooting, noting that he had been told the weapon he was rehearsing with did not contain live ammunition. “Someone is responsible for what happened, and I can’t say who that is, but I know it’s not me,” Mr. Baldwin said in a television interview last year. And he has said that he had been simply following direction on where to point the gun when it went off, killing the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins.
In a statement on Thursday, a lawyer for Mr. Baldwin, Luke Nikas, said:“This decision distorts Halyna Hutchins’s 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.”
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the armorer who was responsible for the guns on set and loaded the gun that day, will also be charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter. The film’s first assistant director, Dave Halls, who handed Mr. Baldwin the gun, agreed to plead guilty to negligent use of a deadly weapon, in exchange for a suspended sentence and six months of probation.
Jason Bowles, a lawyer for Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, said his client was not responsible for involuntary manslaughter, calling the investigation into the case “flawed.”
“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,” Andrea Reeb, the special prosecutor appointed by the district attorney, said in a statement. “It’s that simple. 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.”
Mr. Baldwin, both a producer and a lead actor in “Rust,” was holding the gun that killed Ms. Hutchins and wounded its director, Joel Souza. If convicted of the more serious manslaughter charge, which includes a firearm enhancement, Mr. Baldwin and Ms. Gutierrez-Reed would face a mandatory five-year sentence. The other manslaughter charge carries a sentence of up to 18 months.
The decision to file criminal charges comes 15 months after the fatal shooting on Oct. 21, 2021, when Mr. Baldwin was drawing an old-fashioned revolver for a close-up camera angle. The prosecutors had been waiting for a final report from the sheriff’s office, which was delivered in October.
In the aftermath of the shooting, the authorities found five additional live rounds on the set, including on top of the cart where props were kept and in a belt that Mr. Baldwin was wearing as a costume piece. But the investigation by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office did not answer a key question of the case: how live ammunition ended up on a movie set.
The investigation centered on those who supplied and who physically handled guns and ammunition for the film, some of whom pointed fingers at their colleagues in statements to reporters or interviews with investigators.
The tragedy has resulted in several lawsuits, including from crew members who have accused the production of not properly adhering to safety protocols.
During interviews with the sheriff’s office, some crew members described a lack of consistent meetings devoted to on-set safety. The night before the shooting, most of the camera crew had quit over complaints about overnight lodging and other concerns; in an email to other people on set informing them he was leaving, Lane Luper, the head of the camera department, wrote that the filming of gunfight scenes was played “very fast and loose,” citing two accidental weapons discharges.
Mr. Baldwin has maintained that he is not responsible for the shooting, saying that Ms. Hutchins had been directing him where to point the gun and that he did not pull the trigger before the gun discharged. He told investigators he had pulled the hammer back and let it go in an action that might have set it off.
“I know 1,000 percent I’m not responsible for what happened to her,” Mr. Baldwin told an investigator, Detective Alexandria Hancock, in a phone call following the shooting.
Ms. Carmack-Altwies said an F.B.I. analysis of the gun showed “conclusively” that the trigger had been pulled.
A lawyer for Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, 25, who had been lead armorer on one other film before “Rust,” had previously said that she filled two roles on the “Rust” set — as armorer and props assistant — which made it difficult for her to focus fully on her job as armorer.
Ms. Gutierrez-Reed has also accused Seth Kenney, the primary supplier of guns and ammunition, of being responsible for the shooting, alleging in a lawsuit against him and his company that the supply he sent to the set had mixed live ammunition in with dummy rounds — inert cartridges that are used on film sets to resemble real ammunition. She said in an interview with investigators that she had checked the gun and all six cartridges she loaded in Mr. Baldwin’s gun that day, but she also remarked to investigators, “I wish I would’ve checked it more.”
Mr. Kenney has said he checked all of the ammunition he provided to the production to ensure they were not live, saying in a statement that handling the guns and ammunition on set was Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s responsibility.
A lawyer for Mr. Halls, 63 — the first assistant director, who called out that the gun was “cold” on set that day, according to court papers — had previously said it was not his responsibility to ensure that the gun was safe to handle.
Last year, Matthew Hutchins, the widower of Ms. Hutchins, agreed to settle his wrongful death lawsuit against the “Rust” production. Under the agreement, Mr. Hutchins would become an executive producer of “Rust,” which had been set to resume filming this month. It was not immediately clear how the planned charges would affect those plans.
A lawyer for Mr. Hutchins, Brian J. Panish, said in a statement that he agreed with the decision to bring criminal charges.
“It is a comfort to the family that, in New Mexico, no one is above the law,” Mr. Panish said. “We support the charges, will fully cooperate with this prosecution, and fervently hope the justice system works to protect the public and hold accountable those who break the law.”