Unless the judge has some knowledge that Baldwin either had intent, or was negligent in such a way as to contribute to the death, I’m not seeing what purpose it would serve to have him stand trial. He must feel absolutely terrible as it is, and my understanding is that it was not at all his fault.
Unless the judge has some knowledge that Baldwin either had intent, or was negligent in such a way as to contribute to the death,
Trials are the thing we do that allow juries/judges to come to those conclusions.
Typically, there needs to be enough evidence for an indictment to stand trial. So far, there hasn’t been publicly released enough evidence to show that he was in anyway at fault.
Well he already has been indicted by a grand jury. And the standard for them is probable cause, which is a very low bar. Just that he held a gun when it went off and struck someone should meet that for manslaughter.
He was the employer and he fostered the conditions that led to a death. Something we truly need to penalize.
Not whataboutism, but why they he’ll don’t we pursue corporations this vigorously when their bad conditions get people killed?
Yes with a manslaughter charge.
Employers cut corners all the time to increase production or profit. They should be held accountable if their decision directly leads to someone’s death.
He had a hand in choosing the armorer. His employees were using the firearms on set for recreational shooting with live ammo. We don’t know if he knew that, but if he did then he’s responsible for not firing the armorer for a gross breach of safety. He was at least partially responsible for that and should face consequences for it.
And anyone who touches a gun should not just believe what someone says about it. That’s literally rule 1 of guns: they’re all loaded until proven otherwise by the person holding it. There’s many people whose friend handed them a gun to look at and promised it’s unloaded, only to ventilate said friend or an innocent bystander. Whoever has a gun is responsible for that gun, it’s a big responsibility but not a hard one. Guns are not mystical objects, it takes like half an hour to learn how basically every firearm made in the past 150 years works, and how to check if all of them are safe. You’re not flying a plane when you have a revolver in your hand. He was handed a gun, told it was safe, did nothing to verify that, and shot a woman because of it. If it happened to me and I killed my friend or wife, I’d already be in jail. But because it happened on a movie set, it’s suddenly a big question about who was responsible.
I have friends who own a lot of guns. I’ve held a lot of other people’s guns. As soon as it’s in your hands, it’s your responsibility. Doesn’t matter if we just got back from the FFL and it’s fresh out of the box. Doesn’t matter if there’s no bullets of that caliber anywhere on the property. Doesn’t fucking matter if someone you consider to be an expert hands you a weapon and tells you it’s clear. When a gun touches your hand, you are responsible for it and everything it can do. You take the 3 seconds it takes to clear it yourself and ask any questions that come up. If he had just looked at the gun and asked “why are their bullets in here” and “why don’t the bullets look like they’re props” then Halyna Hutchins would still be alive.
For context another manslaughter charge that stuck in film is the case of Sarah Jones who was run down by a train trying to rescue equipment off a tressle track that the company wasn’t properly cleared to work on. Three people took the hit in that case. Two out of three Executive Producers and the First Assistant Director (a position that serves as the on set safety veto) were charged and received prison sentences in that case.
It is also known that the Rust production had fielded massive concerns from crew regarding gun safety on set in the days before the accident when Baldwin’s stunt double fired two live rounds from a firearm that was not properly checked or cleared and called “cold” on handoff. He just didn’t hit anybody.
This production literally had a full dry run of the fatal incident with Baldwin’s stunt double. Everything from the handoff to the call of “cold gun” was duplicated on the day of the fatal event. That the Stunt double incident didn’t cause a full stop and inquiry with a massive change of protocols to the industry’s best practice Brandon Lee standard is utterly baffling. The whole situation really is a rare and particularly damning senario of extreme negligence on behalf of production and when the negligence pie gets that big it will surprise you who gets a slice.
The purpose is to prosecute him for the crime he has been charged with. That charge is Involuntary manslaughter, which explicitly means he was negligent in a way that lead to the death of another person. The purpose of having him(or literally anyone) stand trial in the American justice system is (supposed) to examine the evidence and determine if it supports the charges against the (presumed innocent) defendant. You don’t get let off the hook for your mistakes just because you ‘feel absolutely terrible’ about it. Your understanding of fault in this situation is incorrect.
It won’t be intent. The article says that it’s involuntary manslaughter at issue. Probably negligence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manslaughter#Involuntary
Involuntary manslaughter is the killing of a human being without intent of doing so, either expressed or implied. It is distinguished from voluntary manslaughter by the absence of intention. It is normally divided into two categories, constructive manslaughter and criminally negligent manslaughter.
Criminally negligent manslaughter is variously referred to as criminally negligent homicide in the United States, and gross negligence manslaughter in England and Wales. In Scotland and some Commonwealth of Nations jurisdictions the offence of culpable homicide might apply.
It occurs where death results from serious negligence, or, in some jurisdictions, serious recklessness. A high degree of negligence is required to warrant criminal liability. A related concept is that of willful blindness, which is where a defendant intentionally puts themselves in a position where they will be unaware of facts which would render them liable.
Criminally negligent manslaughter occurs where there is an omission to act when there is a duty to do so, or a failure to perform a duty owed, which leads to a death. The existence of the duty is essential because the law does not impose criminal liability for a failure to act unless a specific duty is owed to the victim. It is most common in the case of professionals who are grossly negligent in the course of their employment. An example is where a doctor fails to notice a patient’s oxygen supply has disconnected and the patient dies (R v Adomako and R v Perreau). Another example could be leaving a child locked in a car on a hot day.
He was negligent but not in his position as the actor holding the weapon. My understanding is he is partly responsible for deciding to choose a non-union safety team that lead to the death.
Actually… Both. In regular Firearm handoff protocols Actors have a responsibility to uphold on their end. If everything is done to spec it is impossible to fire a live round from a firearm. Some small obstruction in the barrel getting missed and propelled might be in the realm of reasonable but part of the process of handoff requires a mini briefing on handoff of the weapon where each round is checked over where the actor can see and only authorized people are allowed to handle weapons at all. Been standard since the Brandon Lee death on “The Crow”.
Baldwin took the gun from a person on set whom everyone would have known wasn’t supposed to be handling it and didn’t insist on a check. In our industry actors are briefed every time they accept a role that it is their partial responsibility to make sure those checks are done because it is not just a safety thing, it’s a liability issue if you harm someone. If a check is missed as an actor you are supposed to flag it and refuse the unsafe handoff to clear you of any potential liability or after the fact regrets…
Thing is this protocol has ever been throughly tested in a court setting. The last time anyone was killed by a bullet on a set was the cause of the massive change to the industry standard protocol in a mass concerted effort to do a “never again” style pledge which basically worked for 30 years straight. The other notable gun death was an actor who killed himself with a blank by pointing the gun at his own noggin and pulling the trigger which which was something he was expressly not supposed to do for a scene, he just did it on his own without anybody’s sign off.
This industry sea change in part is designed to exonerate Productions from negligence charges like what happened on The Crow but it also made it one of the most well respected industry protocols as the Lee death basically became one of the industry’s cautionary tale that lingers being retold to each new generation of crew. While non-union sets tend to be less regimented it is known fact that concerns of gun safety issues were already flagged and bought to production by the concerned Rust crew and no motion was made to change. Potentially Baldwin as part of a group may have directly ignored further appeals to firearm related safety prior to the shooting. This isn’t the Brandon Lee situation over again - the industry now is a whole new ball game.
(Edit : Forgot to mention that the Rust crew had almost a full beat for beat dry run of the incident a few days before the incident where Baldwin’s stunt double discharged two live rounds after being handed a gun that he was told was “cold”… How one ignores that kind of wake up call I’ll never know.)
I read some more comments and I agree, I was too easy to convince that the actor doesn’t bear responsibility.
I also liked another comment just discussing that it was a real gun, regardless of on set or off. Like anyone else handling a firearm in any other situation, the actor holding it is responsible for checking if it is loaded before pulling the trigger and for ensuring nobody is in the path of any bullet.
Why do they even use real weapons for those kinds of shots? I fell like a high quality fake would be indistinguishable on screen but not even give the opportunity for something like this to happen except for the actor being given the absolute wrong prop.
It was ultimately his responsibility because it was his production. It was not his fault for pulling the trigger, it was the unsafe working conditions on set.
If any of us died at work due to unsafe working conditions then our families would definitely want the employer held responsible to the full extent of the law. Baldwin may be a famous actor but in this situation he was an employer too, not just an actor.
That seems to contradict the article:
Special prosecutor Kari T. Morissey argued that “the actor has responsibility for the firearms once it is in their hands.”
The prosecutor is explicitly arguing that he has responsibility because he was holding the gun.
I will be interested to see the angle the prosecution takes. I think there’s a real sense of embarrassment from the authorities on this one, and they’re trying to make sure they don’t look like they’re sweeping it under the rug to mollify the Hollywood people, but it’s a case with pretty big holes. Since it’s “only” involuntary manslaughter, I wonder if the angle they’ll take is that there’s a legitimate question of fact that even an actor could see that the armorer was a disaffected nepobaby who was bad at her job, and the production wasa chaotic mess, and that all this raised the bar for how Baldwin should have proceeded.
he did. You hold any weapon in your hand, and use it in an irresponsible manner, you’re responsible.
yes, even if an ‘expert’ tells you it’s safe. he had enough wherewithal to know it’s a weapon inherently designed to kill. and to be perfectly blunt, it wasn’t even necessary that he carry a real firearm with dummies. they weren’t filming. they were setting up shots, checking angles and such…
and he should have had enough professional experience to know, you don’t pass guns around like that on a set. it’s controlled by a single person whose responsible for it, and it’s either locked up, being held by that one person, or being actively used by the actor.
It was not his fault for pulling the trigger
Yeah it was. He says he didn’t pull it, but there was nothing wrong with the gun that would cause it to go off any other way. He was pointing it at people. He pointed a real gun at people and he pulled the trigger. Him being told the gun wasn’t loaded is irrelevant. There are several levels of negligence at play and there’s no excuse for any of it.
how is a person getting shot not the fault of the person shooting the gun? like bro if somebody gives you a gun saying it’s empty and you shoot somebody to death with it. you’re free to go? nah
The person who handed him the gun entire job was to make sure it was safe to use that gun as prop on a movie, to simulate danger, but in an utterly safe manner.
That person not only failed to check the gun, but they were also the source of the live ammo. The armorer has already been sentenced to prison for involuntary manslaughter.
“Every gun is dangerous” is the correct general mantra, but when you hire a person to specifically “make a gun not dangerous” who then directly hands you the gun, it’s pretty reasonable to assume it’s not dangerous. Pulling the trigger as part of your job and then killing someone afterwards isn’t directly your fault at that point.
It’s terrible, but we know from the armorers trial the cause was her extreme negligence, not Alec baldwin expecting his employees and coworkers to do their job.
Counter point: one of my friends is a retired PJ. He was a professional soldier who was involved in armed conflict for years. He knows his way around weapons and absolutely does not fuck around.
We go hunting together, and he owns a lot of very nice guns. Even if he hands me a gun and tells me it’s clear, I still check it. I check it because it’s my responsibility to make sure I know what I’m doing when I’m holding the power of life and death in my hands. I check it if we’re just hanging out at his house, or if we’re zeroing in rifles. I’ve never found one of his guns to be loaded when he didn’t intend it to be, but I have found live rounds in other people’s “safe” guns.
Even if an “expert” on firearms tells you a gun is safe, it’s still a gun that’s in your hands. If it goes off, it’s on you if it kills someone. If you can’t be bothered to take the 30 minutes needed to learn how to check any firearm made in past 200 years, then you have no business touching any gun anywhere. That goes double if your job involves handling firearms in any capacity. If you regularly come into contact with guns, wether you’re a soldier, or cop, or an actor who does action movies, it’s your responsibility to know how guns work and when they’re safe and when they’re not.
Everyone keeps bringing up Brandon Lee when this shooting comes up. But these are grossly different situations. With Brandon, the gun was loaded with blanks, and the blank pushed a bullet that was stuck in the barrel of the gun out. Even if the actor had done a basic check to ensure the gun was only loaded with blanks, it’s entirely reasonable that he did not look down the barrel to make sure it wasn’t blocked. That I would agree falls on the armorer, they were using blanks on set, the Armorer should have made sure the gun was safe to operate with them. With Hutchins on the set of Rust, it would have been obvious that those were real bullets if he had looked at them. Prop bullets for revolvers or other shots where you see whole rounds are supposed to have the back of the bullet drilled out and/or a rattle installed in the shell so they can be identified as inert. A 5 second check would have identified the bullets were real and something was wrong.
He was handed a gun, didn’t check it, and shot a woman.
To put it another way: I use fall arrest harnesses for my job pretty frequently. My employer has a safety guy who maintains our equipment and is ultimately responsible for it. Do some of my coworkers take his word for it when he okays our harnesses, yes. Do I? fuck no. I always inspect my harness and report if something looks frayed or worn down. It’s my ass that works near the edge of a 100 foot drop, not Mr safety. Just because it’s someone’s job to do something doesn’t mean they’ll do it 100% perfect all the time, and when something involves a decent chance of death or terrible injury, it needs to be a 100% on job performance. So don’t rely on one person to be on the ball all the time. If something is deadly, it’s worth looking at twice or even three times to make sure it’s really safe.
The person who handed him the gun entire job was to make sure it was safe to use that gun as prop on a movie, to simulate danger, but in an utterly safe manner.
he was handed the gun by an assistant producer. the armorer- Gutierrez-Reed- handed Hall the firearm, who turned around and handed it to baldwin.
So no. that’s not true at all.
Unless the judge has some knowledge that Baldwin either had intent, or was negligent in such a way as to contribute to the death, I’m not seeing what purpose it would serve to have him stand trial. He must feel absolutely terrible as it is, and my understanding is that it was not at all his fault.
Oh yes. He’s reaaalllly sorry. so we should give him special consideration. You know. he’s rich, famous and white. this totally entitles him to special consideration…
nah. Fuck that.
leniency is to be determined during sentencing; not before the trial ever takes place.
