Opening arguments in Alec Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter trial began on Wednesday with both sides focusing on questions of film set and gun safety — integral points that will continue to be examined throughout the case.
Speaking first, special prosecutor Erlinda Ocampo Johnson told jurors in a Santa Fe, N.M., courtroom that Baldwin “violated the cardinal rules of firearm safety” on the set of Rust.
Baldwin, who starred in and co-produced the Western, was holding a gun that went off during a rehearsal of a scene, striking and killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, 26, in October 2021. Director Joel Souza was also wounded when the gun went off.
Opening statements from Johnson and Baldwin’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, both dove into who was to blame for those agreed-upon facts.
Johnson’s statements touched on Baldwin’s alleged cavalier misuse of the gun in question, a general lack of safety on the film set and the claim that the gun would not have gone off without its trigger being pulled — something the actor has repeatedly denied.
“The evidence will show that someone who played make believe with a real gun and violated the cardinal rules of firearm safety is the defendant, Alexander Baldwin,” Johnson said.
Matt Long, a former prosecutor specializing in gun and violent crime, says that even though Alec Baldwin could face up to 18 months in prison for his role in the fatal shooting on the Rust film set, ‘lifelong consequences’ could follow the actor.
Spiro, in his opening comments to the jury, said “these cardinal rules, they’re not cardinal rules on a movie set” and argued that handling a weapon is a normal part of that particular workplace.
Spiro also alluded to two questions that will be a defining aspect of the trial: whether the gun — a replica of an 1873 revolver — malfunctioned and whether Baldwin intentionally pulled the trigger.
Spiro pushed back on Johnson’s arguments that subsequent tests found the gun was in good working order and focused on Baldwin’s role as an actor — a job whose responsibilities, Spiro argued, do not include ensuring the safety of weapons.
“The evidence will show that on a movie set, safety has to occur before a gun is placed in an actor’s hand,” Spiro told the jury.
Prop or gun?
That discussion will likely continue to rear its head in the proceedings and already has made an impact.
“The narrow issue really is … is this firearm a prop, or is it a real gun,” Arizona trial attorney and former prosecutor Matthew Long told CBC News. “That really seems to be the the narrow question that both sides are focusing on.”
Long said that arguments will come out as the defence seeks to show Baldwin was acting with a reasonable amount of safety for an actor on a movie set. The prosecution, he said, has a higher bar to clear: that, despite being an actor who believed he was holding a prop, when Baldwin pointed the gun he had the same responsibilities as someone would off of a movie set.
“Their burden — and I think it’s an extremely challenging one to overcome — is in this context, was there a real risk of death, and did [Baldwin] willfully disregard that risk?” Long said. “And what the prosecutor’s essentially saying is, ‘Gun safety principles apply everywhere, including here.'”
On Wednesday, that debate began as Spiro and Johnson disagreed over the culpability of the film’s armourer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in April. She is currently serving an 18-month sentence, though is appealing that verdict.
Johnson argued that Baldwin failed to do a safety check with Gutierrez-Reed, and that meant it went unnoticed that the gun contained a live round instead of blanks.
It was Baldwin’s lack of concern for on-set safety protocols and an unwillingness to do a safety check with Gutierrez-Reed, because “he didn’t want to offend her,” that led to Hutchins’s death, Johnson said.
“The evidence will show, ladies and gentlemen, that like in many workplaces, there are people who act in a reckless manner and place other individuals in danger and act without due regard for the safety of others,” she said. “That, you will hear, was the defendant Alexander Baldwin.”
An actor’s sole job is to act, defence says
Earlier Wednesday, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer agreed with the defence that Baldwin’s role as co-producer on Rust had no relevance to the case after Johnson tried, unsuccessfully, to argue that Baldwin was “keenly aware” of his safety obligations as a co-producer and bore a special responsibility — beyond that of an actor — for the dangerous environment on set that led to the shooting.
Spiro’s opening statements on Wednesday, which ran roughly 10 minutes longer than Johnson’s, focused on that distinction.
He said it was armourer Gutierrez-Reed who loaded the live round into the gun, and Baldwin did exactly what actors always do on the set of the film: handle a gun as directed once being told it is safe.
“Never — the witnesses will tell you — in history is [that] something that an actor has done: intercepted a live bullet from a prop gun,” Spiro said. “No actor in history — no one could have imagined or expected an actor to do that.”
First witness takes the stand
The first witness to take the stand Wednesday, law enforcement officer Nicholas LeFleur, spoke mostly about Baldwin’s actions after the shooting. As the first officer to arrive on scene, footage captured by LeFleur’s body camera that day was played to the court — along with additional footage from a Santa Fe county sheriff’s deputy.
The video showed frantic efforts to save Hutchins’s life and, later, LeFleur’s instructions to Baldwin not to talk to any potential witnesses — something Baldwin repeatedly does.
One portion of the video shows Baldwin sitting in the back of a truck, speaking with two other men. As LeFleur walks up, Baldwin can be heard to say, “She’s handing me an empty gun.”
Questioned by the prosecution, LeFleur said that the setup concerned him.
“Why does that concern you?” special prosecutor Kari Morrissey asked LeFleur.
“It could essentially coerce testimony,” he said. “People would say the same thing because the other person said it, rather than them saying their own opinion — their own view of what they saw.”
Later, Spiro pressed LeFleur on why he left the word “accidental” out of his description of the shooting call during his questioning by the prosecution. LeFleur said it was not intentional.
And LeFleur acknowledged that in a pretrial interview he said the circumstances of the scene suggested that Baldwin’s actions were unintentional.
Prosecutors painted Rust actor Alec Baldwin as headstrong and lax on gun safety as his involuntary manslaughter trial got underway. Baldwin’s lawyers say he had no reason to believe there were live rounds in the prop gun that went off, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in 2021.
Baldwin, who has pleaded not guilty, sat surrounded by his lawyers in the downtown Santa Fe courthouse a short drive from the movie-ranch setting of scenes from Rust. He watched the proceedings silently, occasionally taking notes on a legal pad.
Attorney Gloria Allred sat in the front row of the courtroom audience, a reminder of Baldwin’s other legal difficulties. Allred is representing Rust script supervisor Mamie Mitchell and Hutchins’s sister and parents in a civil lawsuit against Baldwin and other producers.
