State of New Mexico v. Alec Baldwin – The American Spectator

Oh, the irony.

In 2018 actor Alec Baldwin joined a coalition of Hollywood celebrities in forming the “No Rifle Association Initiative,” which sought to reduce the National Rifle Association’s influence on American politics and society. In the wake of a horrific mass casualty shooting at the Parkland High School, the initiative sent an open letter to NRA’s then executive vice president, Wayne La Pierre, denouncing the NRA and accusing it of opposing “every single basic gun reform measure that might have saved lives” and vowing to “shine a bright light on what you and your organization do to America.”

Baldwin also verbally attacked NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch on Twitter.

“I see that @DLoesch wants to ‘take back the truth.’” Baldwin tweeted in 2018 regarding a trailer for her show on NRA TV. “And she doesn’t care how many dead bodies she has to step over in that pursuit. The Second Amendment is not a moral credit card that buys you all the guns you want. That law needs to be rethought.”

Coming from an actor working in an industry that has reaped untold wealth purveying pornographic violence involving the use of firearms, Baldwin’s self-righteous condemnation of Loesch, the NRA, and the Second Amendment was breathtakingly hypocritical.

And now, in a cruel twist of fate, Baldwin’s attack on the NRA turns out to be beyond ironic given that he is about to be criminally charged with involuntary manslaughter due in large part to his failure to follow the very simple and basic rules of gun safety as promoted by the NRA and other gun rights advocates.

So what happened?

On Oct. 21, 2021, Baldwin shot and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during a rehearsal on the set of Rust, a Western movie that was being filmed in New Mexico. Yesterday, the Santa Fe County prosecutor’s office issued a statement announcing that Baldwin and Rust‘s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, will be charged with involuntary manslaughter.

In response, Baldwin’s attorney 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.”

But in reply, Mary Carmack-Altwies, the lead prosecutor, told CNN that a loaded gun was “handed off to Alec Baldwin, he didn’t check it, he didn’t do what he was supposed to do to make sure he was safe or make sure anyone else around him was safe. He pointed the gun at Halyna Hutchins, and he pulled the trigger.”

While Hutchins’ death may have been an accident, the prosecutor said Baldwin “doesn’t get a free pass” because he’s a movie star.

So what are Baldwin’s prospects at trial? Given the evidence — a great deal of which comes from Baldwin’s own mouth — and the law of New Mexico, he is at grave risk of being convicted. If that happens, he faces a maximum sentence of 18 months imprisonment on the manslaughter charge with a possible five-year enhancement for having used a gun in the commission of a crime.

So let’s look at the evidence.

Shortly after killing Hutchins, Baldwin was interviewed by George Stephanopoulos of ABC News. (You can view that interview in its entirety by clicking on this link.)

While Baldwin punctuated his answers with tears and expressions of anguish and sympathy for Hutchins’ family, from a legal standpoint, the interview was nothing short of disastrous. As explained below, Baldwin illogically and unconvincingly denied responsibility for the killing and lamely attempted to shift blame for Hutchins’ death to others, including, stupefyingly enough, the victim herself. In the process, he effectively and unwittingly confessed to committing involuntary manslaughter.

The killing took place as Baldwin and Hutchins were doing a “marking rehearsal” in a faux church structure where a gunfight scene was to be filmed. According to Baldwin, assistant director Dave Halls called out “cold gun” (meaning that it held no live ammunition) as he handed a revolver to the actor. Baldwin said that he did not personally check to see if the gun was loaded since that was the responsibility of the production’s armorer, 24-year-old Hannah Gutierrez-Reed. But, as will be discussed below, Reed was not on the set when Halls handed the gun to Baldwin.

Baldwin said that, a week previously, Reed had given him a one-and-a-half-hour “safety demonstration” during which they had fired “the pistol,” an apparent reference to the revolver in question. Left unsaid was whether or not that training session involved the use of live ammunition.

Although Rust was only the second movie on which Reed had served as an armorer, Baldwin “assumed that she was up to the job because she was hired.” Also, she had done nothing during the safety demonstration that concerned him.

During the marking rehearsal in the church set, Hutchins directed Baldwin on how and where to hold the gun in front of the camera. Baldwin told Stephanopoulos that he was not pointing the pistol at the camera. Instead, he was pointing it at Hutchins who was beside the camera.

What happened next is summarized in the following quotations transcribed from the interview video.

Baldwin: And she’s getting me to position the gun. Everything is at her direction … I’m holding the  gun where she told me to hold it, which ended up being aimed right below her armpit is what I was told. I don’t know…

So then I said to her, “In this scene I’m going to cock the gun.” I said, “Do you want to see that?” And she said, “Yes.” So I take the gun and start to cock the gun. I’m not going to pull the trigger. I said, “Do you see this?” She said, “Just lower it down, tilt it down.” 

And I cock the gun. “Can you see that? Can you see that? Can you see that?”

And then I let go of the hammer of the gun and the gun goes off. I let go of the hammer of the gun, the gun goes off.

…

Stephanopoulos: It wasn’t in the script for the trigger to be pulled?

Baldwin: Well, the trigger wasn’t pulled. I didn’t pull the trigger.

Stephanopoulos: So you never pulled the trigger?

Baldwin: No, no, no, no, no. I would never point a gun at anyone and pull a trigger at them, never. Never. That was the training that I had. You don’t point a gun at me and pull the trigger.

Now let’s pause and examine step by step what Baldwin said.

First, he did not personally check the pistol to see if it was loaded.

Second, he admitted to pointing the gun at Hutchins because that’s where she directed him to aim it.

Third, as he continued to point the gun at Hutchins, he pulled back the hammer.

Fourth, he says that even though he didn’t pull the trigger, when he let go of the hammer, the gun discharged.

When interviewed by police immediately after the shooting, Baldwin denied that he had pulled the trigger.

But Santa Fe County Sheriff Adam Mendoza, who investigated Hutchins’ death, said that Baldwin’s story made no sense.

“Guns don’t just go off,” Mendoza told Fox News. “So whatever needs to happen to manipulate the firearm [to make it fire], he did that and it was in his hands.”

The weapon in question is a replica of an 1873 Colt Single Action Army .45 caliber revolver manufactured in Italy by F.LLI Pietta. There are two ways that this gun can be fired.

The first way involves cocking the hammer and then pressing the trigger. Baldwin denied doing this.

The second way involves pressing and holding down the trigger while pulling back the hammer. With the trigger held down, the hammer will slam forward once it is no longer manually held in place. When that happens, the gun will discharge.

In either method, the amount of finger pressure and the distance that the trigger travels are minuscule.

F.LLI Pietta’s “Instruction and Safety Manual for 1873 Single Action Revolvers” describes in detail how to operate the weapon and specifically warns the operator of the extreme care that must be taken in manipulating and “decocking” the hammer while holding down the trigger.

On May 3, 2022, the FBI Laboratory issued a report of its testing of the gun. The lab determined that the revolver “could not be made to fire without a pull of the trigger while the working internal components were intact and functional.” However, according to the report, the FBI’s testing “fractured” those components, which has resulted in allowing the gun to fire without pulling the trigger. Nevertheless, in its original condition prior to being damaged by the FBI lab, it was necessary to pull the trigger in order for the gun to fire.

At trial, Baldwin’s claim that he didn’t pull the trigger can be contradicted by the FBI lab’s findings. As a matter of law, such a false exculpatory…