Alec Baldwin watches opening statements in his manslaughter trial on July 10, 2024, in Santa Fe, N.M. (Law&Crime Network)
The manslaughter trial of Alec Baldwin, 66, began in earnest with opening statements in a New Mexico courtroom on Tuesday morning.
Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, 42, died when a gun held by the famed actor discharged on the set of the Western movie “Rust” on Oct. 21, 2021.
The state painted a picture of Baldwin as a brash rule-breaker who did not listen to, or abide by, set-in-stone safety rules that fateful day.
“When someone plays make believe with a real gun in a real-life workplace and while playing make believe with that real gun violates the cardinal rule of firearm safety, people’s lives are endangered and someone could be killed,” prosecutor Erlinda Johnson began. “It’s simple, straightforward. 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.”
“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,” the prosecutor went on. That was Baldwin, she said.
‘Did his own thing.’
In succinct fashion, the state laid out a case where safety guidelines were presented, directions to perform a certain way were given but, throughout his time on the set, “the defendant did his own thing.”
Johnson promised jurors they would see multiple videos of Baldwin handling the firearm. Those videos, the prosecutor said, will show him using the weapon but never performing a safety check with the film’s disgraced armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who was convicted of the same charge Baldwin faces, “because he didn’t want to offend her.”
The prosecutor also said jurors will see, in those videos, Baldwin using the gun as a pointer, cocking the hammer when he is not supposed to do so, putting his finger on the trigger when it is not supposed to be on the trigger and “numerous” other “breaches of firearm safety.”
Johnson also previewed the testimony of a movie set safety expert who will be brought in to testify that industry rules require people to treat all firearms like they are real and loaded, to never point guns at people, and to never put your finger on the trigger unless you are “prepared to shoot or to destroy whatever is in front of you.”
On the day Hutchins died, the state said, there wasn’t even a real rehearsal happening. Rather, she said, the actor was being directed through a series of blocking exercises — which are simply the physical placement of actors and objects on a set or stage.
During the blocking, Baldwin was directed to slowly pull the gun out and hold it, Johnson said. The prosecutor then characterized how those exercises occurred: one time he did it correctly, one time he did it differently by cocking the hammer without being asked to do so, and then they broke for lunch.
“On Oct. 21, 2021, after that lunch break, the defendant violated those set safety rules,” the prosecutor alleged.
Another round of blocking exercises ensued. Each time, Baldwin was directed to slowly remove the gun from the holster and nothing more, Johnson said. Each time, however, Baldwin removed the gun quickly and cocked the hammer with “his finger was on or around the trigger.” The third time, the prosecutor said, Baldwin pointed the gun at Hutchins.
“The fatal, and one of the main problems, that afternoon of Oct. 21, was that the defendant didn’t do a gun safety check with that inexperienced armorer,” Johnson said in summary. “He pointed the gun at another human being, cocked the hammer, and pulled that trigger in reckless disregard for Ms. Hutchins’ safety.”
‘On a movie set.’
Defense attorney Alex Spiro often invoked cinematic themes, used references to famous films, and frequently repeated the phrase “on a movie set” in a decidedly more disjointed opening statement.
“This was an unspeakable tragedy, but Alec Baldwin committed no crime,” the defense attorney began. “He was an actor acting — playing the role of Harlan Rust. An actor playing a character can act in ways that are lethal that just aren’t lethal on a movie set. These ‘cardinal rules,’ they’re not cardinal rules on a movie set. And I don’t have to tell you much more about this because you’ve all seen gunfights in movies. And the reason that can happen is because safety is ensured before the actor. On this movie set, there were people responsible for ensuring the safety of the set and the firearm — those people failed in their duties but Alec Baldwin committed no crime.”
Part of the jumbled defense beginning was intentional: Spiro played the initial 911 call after Hutchins was shot as well as video of Baldwin practicing the scene that, when later blocked, took Hutchins’ life.
What could prove to be a powerful moment for the defense did not rely on Spiro’s oft-invoked “movie magic” at all.
In the raw scene practice footage, Baldwin is seen seated and looking at the camera. He asks the director if he should “whip it out” — in reference to the prop gun — and the director answers in the affirmative. In successive takes, Baldwin quickly draws the gun and points it forward without complaint.
Spiro, however, did not linger on the direction issue after the footage aired — instead pivoting to a different point and telling jurors: “Everyone was doing exactly how they go about their business everyday.”
Part of the defense’s case seems to be raising a bit of a whodunit: “Why did a real bullet get loaded into a prop movie gun?” Spiro asked at one point. The defense attorney also said a key concern is how the real bullet get onto the movie set in the first place.
The defense asked and left the questions to hang in the air — forecasting a mystery that, sadly, has no real answers.
“No one had any idea that this venomous, toxic element had been inserted into this magic they were creating,” Spiro said. “But it did. It entered that place. It killed an amazing person. It wounded another and it changed lives forever. And, so, to find out what happened on that movie set, you need to do something that the prosecutors could never do. You have to step back and remember what they were doing on a movie set.”
The defense went on to argue that verisimilitude is a necessary component to making movies — particularly the use of guns.
Part of the disconnect in the defense opening came from no less than three objections lodged by the state.
Under the court’s rules, those objections will remain a mystery. Instead of objecting on grounds audible to the gallery, each side is expected to request a brief sidebar — so as not to use objections to influence jurors, First Judicial District Court Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer ruled on Monday during a pretrial hearing.
One of the state’s objections came as Spiro rattled off a list of violent films including “Platoon,” “Apocalypse Now,” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” After the silent-to-viewers sidebar, the defense briefly mentioned the role guns play in people’s lives — and therefore in films — and then moved on again.
Spiro then described the concept of a “cold gun,” saying the phrase was called out on the set before the armorer handed the gun to Baldwin. Then, the defense recounted the blocking exercises, and the surprise shooting before playing the 911 call in which someone exclaims “the f—— AD … he’s responsible.”
“Not a word about Alec Baldwin,” the defense attorney said, repeating some of what was said on the call, after the audio played.
Spiro later went over several details of the immediate aftermath — promising jurors they will be able to view videos and pieces of evidence beneficial to Baldwin’s point of view as well — and stressing to jurors “the evidence in the moment” and what people did and “originally said” on the day in question matter more than anything else in the case.
“If you remember anything I say today as the evidence proceeds, remember that,” the defense attorney advised. “Look at the evidence of what the people of ‘Rust’ said and did that day. Life changes. Memories change. There are human motivations. Internal pressure. External pressure. That’s why preservation is so important.”
Almost from the beginning, however, the investigation went awry, Spiro said. He noted that police did not secure the prop truck — which supplied the prop cart where the gun and ammunition were stored — until “several days” after the shooting and did not secure the prop house — which supplies the prop truck — until “over a month” later.
Eventually, the heart of the defense’s argument came into view.
The sloppy investigation, Spiro said, quickly became something of a prosecutorial effort to pin Hutchins’ death on Baldwin.
The facts of the case, the defense attorney argued, did not matter to the state so much as winning a high-profile trial.
Key here, he said, was the admitted destruction of the gun that occurred when an FBI firearm examiner performed several tests.
“They just destroyed it,” Spiro said. “Can’t ever be tested in the same condition it was in that day. Won’t ever allow Alec to show his truth. And the destruction of this gun that you will hear in this evidence is symbolic of this entire case. Because the officers will tell you at that point: they weren’t really investigating anymore. They were trying to disprove Alec — to get Alec.”
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
