by A grand jury in New Mexico indicted Alec Baldwin on Friday for involuntary manslaughter, reviving the criminal case against him for the shooting death of a cinematographer on the set of the movie “Rust” more than two years ago when a weapon he carried. rehearsing with him he shot himself.
The indictment, which came exactly one year after the first manslaughter case against him was announced, was the latest change of fortune for Baldwin. The local district attorney’s initial case failed and the initial charge against Baldwin was dismissed in April. But a new prosecution team, Kari T. Morrissey and Jason J. Lewis, decided to present the case to a grand jury, which indicted Baldwin on Friday.
In New Mexico, a manslaughter conviction on a charge like the one Baldwin faces can carry up to 18 months in prison.
“We look forward to our day in court,” Baldwin’s attorneys, Luke Nikas and Alex Spiro, said in a statement Friday.
Baldwin, who starred in and was a producer on “Rust,” a western, has maintained that he was not responsible for the death of the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and said he was told the gun did not contain real bullets. and that there wasn’t supposed to be live ammunition on set. He has also maintained that he did not pull the trigger when the gun fired, although a forensic report commissioned by the prosecution determined that he must have pulled the trigger for it to fire, which contributed to his decision to reactivate the criminal case.
For months, the possibility of a new indictment has loomed over Baldwin, 65, who has rarely kept a low profile. As prosecutors prepared to present his case to the grand jury, the actor made a surprise appearance on “Saturday Night Live” attracted headlines after a heated exchange with a protester at a pro-Palestinian rally, and frequently posted on Instagram about politics and his family. But there have been signs that Baldwin, who has said in court papers that the case has made it harder for him to get work as an actor, may be facing financial pressures: He recently put his 10,000-square-foot Hamptons home on the market for $19 million. of dollars, appearing in a real estate ad for the property.
The 12-person grand jury met to hear the case in New Mexico First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe beginning Thursday. At least eight jurors had to agree that there was probable cause to indict.
The indictment charged Mr. Baldwin with two different counts of involuntary manslaughter, but he can only be convicted of one. The most serious accuses him of “complete disregard or indifference for the safety of others,” while the other accuses him of negligent use of a firearm. Both are serious crimes.
Several witnesses testified before the grand jury, according to the indictment, including Alexandria Hancock, a detective involved in the initial investigation; Ross Addiego and Lane Luper, members of the “Rust” team; Marissa Poppell, a crime scene technician who worked on the case; and Bryan Carpenter, consultant on firearms industry practices.
On the day of filming, October 21, 2021, the production was setting up a tight frame of Baldwin’s character, a grizzled outlaw named Harland Rust, pulling an antique revolver from a holster and pointing it toward the camera when the gun fired. A bullet struck and killed Ms. Hutchins and wounded the film’s director, Joel Souza. After the shooting, investigators found five additional live bullets on the set, but law enforcement officials who investigated the case have never put forward a theory about how they ended up there.
The film’s gunsmith, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, responsible for weapons and ammunition on the film’s set, also faces a charge of involuntary manslaughter. She has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to stand trial in February.
Dave Halls, the film’s first assistant director, who was in charge of security on the set, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in the case, thus avoiding prison time.
The legal issue has been whether Baldwin acted with “willful disregard” for the safety of others when he handled the gun that day, even though the actor had been told that the gun did not contain live ammunition and that live ammunition was prohibited in place.
The prosecutors who initially handled the case — Mary Carmack-Altwies, a Santa Fe County district attorney, and Andrea Reeb, a lawyer who was appointed special prosecutor — argued yes.
They filed charges against him a year ago, in January 2023, arguing that, as both an actor and producer of the film, Baldwin had a responsibility to ensure that the gun did not contain real bullets. His lawyer and others in the film industry, including gunsmiths and actors, disputed that notion, saying actors are expected to trust professionals hired to handle weapons on set. SAG-AFTRA, the union representing film and television actors, said at the time that “the prosecutor’s assertion that an actor has a duty to ensure the functional and mechanical functioning of a firearm on a production set is erroneous and misinformed” and that “an actor’s job is not to be an expert in firearms or weapons.”
Prosecutors’ original case collapsed amid questions from Mr. Baldwin’s lawyers, who noted that Mr. Baldwin had been wrongly charged under a law that did not exist at the time of the shooting, and that Ms. Reeb was serving improperly simultaneously as Special Prosecutor and member of the New Mexico Legislature.
After Reeb resigned and a judge ruled that the district attorney could not appoint a new special prosecutor to work on the case without resigning herself, Carmack-Altwies turned the case over to a new team of prosecutors, said Ms. Morrissey and Mr. Lewis. They dismissed the original charge against Mr. Baldwin after receiving new evidence indicating that the gun may have been modified in a way that could have made it easier to fire without pulling the trigger.
They reserved the right to reload Mr. Baldwin after sending the gun for further inspection. A new forensic report written by Lucien C. Haag determined that Baldwin must have pulled the trigger and found that the gun needed two pounds of pressure to fire.
But in order to carry out the tests, Haag had to replace parts of the gun, which had been damaged by the FBI during its own analysis. That complication will surely be raised by Baldwin’s defense, who has described the reactivation of the prosecution as “wrong.”
Mr. Baldwin has said that he removed the firing pin from the gun and that when he released it, without pulling the trigger, the gun went off.
“Someone put a real bullet in a gun, a bullet that wasn’t even supposed to be on the property,” Baldwin said in a television interview a little more than a month after the shooting. “Someone is responsible for what happened and I can’t say who it is, but I know it’s not me.”
Prosecutors continue to investigate how the real bullets got onto the film set. In September, Morrissey wrote an email to a lawyer for Gutierrez-Reed, which he recently published in a court filing, saying that if Gutierrez-Reed came forward with information about the source of the live bullets, “it would be a great help in getting him a favorable resolution.” “.
Last year, as the original criminal case against him faltered, Baldwin spent weeks finishing filming on “Rust,” which producers decided to complete as a tribute to Hutchins.
