SANTA FE, New Mexico –
Actor Alec Baldwin and a weapons specialist will be charged with manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on a New Mexico film set, prosecutors announced Thursday, citing a “criminal disregard for safety.”
Santa Fe District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies issued a statement announcing the charges against Baldwin and Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who supervised the weapons on the set of the western “Rust.”
Halyna Hutchins died shortly after being shot during rehearsals at a ranch outside Santa Fe on October 21, 2021. Baldwin was pointing a gun at Hutchins when it went off, killing her and wounding the director, Joel Souza.
Deputy Chief David Halls, who delivered the gun to Baldwin, signed an agreement to plead guilty to negligent use of a deadly weapon, the district attorney’s office said.
The decision to indict Baldwin marked a stunning downfall for an A-list actor whose 40-year career included the first blockbuster “The Hunt for Red October” and a starring role in the sitcom “30 Rock,” as well as iconic appearances in Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed” and a film adaptation of David Mamet’s “Glengary Glen Ross”. In recent years, he has been known for impersonating former President Donald Trump on “Saturday Night Live.”
Involuntary manslaughter can involve a murder that occurs while the defendant is doing something that is legal but dangerous and acting carelessly or without caution.
The charge is a fourth-degree felony, punishable by up to 18 months in jail and a US$5,000 fine under New Mexico law. The charges also include a provision that could result in a mandatory five-year prison term because the crime was committed with a weapon.
Carmack-Altwies said the charges will be filed at the end of January and that Baldwin and Gutierrez-Reed will receive a summons to appear in court. She said prosecutors will forgo a grand jury and trust a judge to determine if there is probable cause to move forward to trial.
Andrea Reeb, special prosecutor in the case, cited a “pattern of criminal disregard for security” on the set.
“If any 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 Reeb, also a newly sworn-in Republican state legislator.
Baldwin’s attorney said the charges represented “a terrible judicial error.”
The actor “had no reason to believe there was a live bullet in the gun, or anywhere on the set. He relied on the professionals he worked with, who assured him the gun had no live bullets. We will fight these charges . , and we will win,” Luke Nikas said in a statement.
A lawyer for Gutierrez-Reed said the charges were “the result of a seriously flawed investigation and an inaccurate understanding of all the facts.”
“We intend to expose the full truth and we believe that a jury will clear Hannah of wrongdoing,” Jason Bowles said.
It was unclear when Baldwin and Gutierrez-Reed might be required to appear in court in Santa Fe once charges are filed. Defendants can remotely participate in many initial court proceedings or request that their first appearance be waived.
Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza, who led the initial investigation into Hutchins’ death, described “a degree of neglect” on the film set. He but he left decisions on potential criminal charges to prosecutors after delivering the results of a year-long investigation in October. That report did not specify how the live ammunition ended up on the film set.
Baldwin has described the murder as a “tragic accident”.
He tried to clear his name by suing the people involved in handling and supplying the loaded gun. Baldwin, also a co-producer of “Rust,” said he was told the gun was safe.
In his lawsuit, Baldwin said that while working on camera angles with Hutchins, he pointed the gun in her direction and pulled back and released the firing pin on the gun, which fired.
The New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator determined the shooting to be an accident after completing an autopsy and review of police reports.
Alec Baldwin on a film set in Santa Fe, NM (Jim Weber/Santa Fe New Mexican)
The New Mexico Office of Occupational Safety and Health imposed the maximum fine against Rust Movie Productions based on a series of safety failures, including testimony that production managers took limited or no action to address two blank ammunition failures on set before shooting.
Regulators say on-set production managers failed to follow industry-standard protocols for gun safety. Rust Movie Productions continues to contest the $137,000 fine.
The gunsmith who oversaw the firearms on set, Gutierrez-Reed, has been the subject of much scrutiny in the case, along with an independent ammunition supplier. An attorney for Gutierrez-Reed has said she did not put a live bullet in the gun that killed Hutchins and believes she was the victim of sabotage. Authorities said they found no evidence of that.
Investigators initially found 500 rounds of ammunition on the film set, a mix of blanks, fake bullets and what appeared to be real bullets. Industry insiders have said that live rounds should never be on set.
Hutchins’ family, widower Matthew Hutchins and his son Andros, have settled a lawsuit against the producers under an agreement that aims to restart filming with Matthew Hutchins as executive producer.
In a statement issued by their attorney, the relatives thanked authorities for seeking the charges. “It’s a comfort to the family that, in New Mexico, no one is above the law,” they said.
The Screen Actors Guild said the weapons are provided to the actors by skilled professionals who are “directly responsible” for security.
“The prosecutor’s assertion that an actor has a duty to ensure the functional and mechanical operation of a firearm on a production set is incorrect and uninformed. An actor’s job is not to be an expert on weapons or firearms,” the union said in a statement.
Criminal charges have rarely been brought in connection with deaths on film sets.
A district attorney in North Carolina cited negligence as a factor but decided not to press charges in the 1993 death of Brandon Lee while filming a scene in the movie “The Crow.” The son of martial arts legend Bruce Lee was struck by a .44 caliber bullet from a gun that was supposed to have fired a blank.
Most recently, film director Randall Miller pleaded guilty to manslaughter and trespassing in the death of camera assistant Sarah Jones, who was struck by a train on the set of “Midnight Rider” in 2014 in rural from Georgia. The production did not have permission to be on the train tracks, and Miller served half of a two-year sentence.
Hutchins’ death has already influenced negotiations over safety provisions in union film crew contracts with Hollywood producers. The shooting also prompted other filmmakers to downplay the risks by using computer-generated gunshot images instead of actual weapons with blank ammunition.
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Associated Press writers Susan Montoya in Albuquerque, NM, and Andrew Dalton in Los Angeles contributed to this report.