Alec Baldwin goes on trial Tuesday in a high stakes case that could see him jailed for 18 months if found guilty in a three-year-old shooting death on the set of his movie Rust.
The 30 Rock star is accused of negligence when he accidentally shot dead a cinematographer on the New Mexico set of the western.
The case in Santa Fe is expected to last 10 days with jury selection starting Tuesday and opening statements likely to begin Wednesday.
The trial will put Baldwin, 66, under intense pressure in a case which his lawyers have called an ‘abuse of an innocent person whose rights have been trampled to the extreme’.
Baldwin was a producer and the star of Rust when he shot dead cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, 42, a mother-of-one, while filming with a prop gun that had a live round inside it.
The film’s director Joel Souza was also injured.
The 30 Rock star arrived at court on Tuesday for the start of his trial, in which he is accused of negligence when he accidentally shot dead a cinematographer on the set of the Western, Rust, in 2021
The case in Santa Fe, New Mexico , is expected to last 10 days with jury selection Tuesday and opening statements likely to begin Wednesday
The trial will put Baldwin, 66, under intense pressure in a case which his lawyers have called an ‘abuse of an innocent person whose rights have been trampled to the extreme’
The case has had a long and tortured path to trial: Baldwin was originally charged in January 2023 with two counts of involuntary manslaughter.
They were dropped three months later as in light of new evidence, prosecutors said, adding they needed more time to investigate.
Baldwin was sensationally charged for a second time in January this year with the same charges, two counts of involuntary manslaughter, and he pleaded not guilty.
The following month Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, 26, the armorer on the set of Rust, went on trial and was found guilty and jailed for 18 months for letting the live round get into the gun.
Gutierrez-Reed’s trial has offered a preview of the case against Baldwin, with prosecutors expected to accuse him of breaching industry standards about safety on set.
Those rules include not pointing a gun at anyone and not putting your finger on the trigger.
In one filing, prosecutor Kari Morrissey said: ‘These are the rules for actors handling firearms on movie sets and Mr Baldwin managed to disregard every single one of them’.
As part of their case, prosecutors are likely to highlight how the New Mexico safety regulator issued a $136,000 fine to the Rust producers for ‘willful and serious’ safety failings.
Baldwin was sensationally charged for a second time in January this year with the same charges, two counts of involuntary manslaughter, and he pleaded not guilty
Halyna Hutchins died after being hit by a bullet from the prop gun that Baldwin was handling
The movie was being shot on the Bonanza Creek Ranch film set in Santa Fe
Baldwin, seen here outside the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s offices on the day of the shooting, was sensationally charged for a second time in January this year
Among the evidence the jury is likely to hear is that Baldwin was closely involved in every aspect of the production from commissioning Souza to write the script, which Baldwin owned the rights to.
Baldwin is likely to be depicted as rushing the filming due to the movie having a small budget – allegedly at the expense of safety.
In one scene from the filming that was shown during Gutierrez-Reed’s trial, Baldwin demanded a second shot of a scene immediately after one that just finished.
He was heard saying: ‘Right away! Right away! Let’s reload. Here we go, come on! We should have two guns, both reloading’.
In the first trial, witnesses said that Baldwin could have used a stick in the scene where he accidentally shot Hutchins dead because it was just a rehearsal known as blocking.
But Baldwin insisted on using the real guns, known as his ‘hero props’, because he preferred them.
Another claim made during the first trial was that Baldwin declined to do a safety briefing with Gutierrez-Reed before filming began.
The night before the incident, six members of the camera crew quit because of their concerns over safety, the first trial heard.
Baldwin, Hutchins and armorer Gutierrez-Reed are circled on the set of Rust alongside fellow cast members and staffers
Baldwin broke his silence on the shooting in an interview with ABC
In a video released by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office, Alec Baldwin speaks with investigators following the fatal shooting
A crucial point of contention is likely to be Baldwin’s claim that he never pulled the trigger on the gun, a claim called into question by a prosecution firearms expert during the Gutierrez-Reed trial.
Speaking to ABC News in December 2021 Baldwin said: ‘I didn’t pull the trigger. I would never point a gun at anyone and pull the trigger at them. Never’.
The claim will likely come up again during arguments made by Baldwin’s lawyers Luke Nikas and Alex Spiro, the high profile attorney whose other clients include Elon Musk, Jay-Z, Mick Jagger, Naomi Osaka and Robert Kraft.
In legal filings they have appealed to the jury’s common sense and said that ‘nobody believed the gun Baldwin was holding was capable of discharging anything, let alone a live bullet’.
Nikas wrote: ‘It was a prop on a movie set, and the actor had been told by the responsible professionals that it held no live ammunition’.
The defense is likely to blame Gutierrez-Reed and First Assistant Director Dave Halls, who handed Baldwin the gun and told him it was ‘cold’, meaning that it wasn’t loaded with live bullets.
Halls has already pleaded no contest to a charge of negligent use of a deadly weapon and received six months probation.
During the Gutierrez-Reed trial, Halls said he was ‘negligent in checking the gun properly’.
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed poses for mugshot after being convicted of involuntary manslaughter – she’s spent the last month in jail
Halls broke down in tears during the first trial as he described in graphic detail what happened during the shooting.
If he is called to testify, Halls will likely recount the episode once again – this time with Baldwin in court listening in.
Baldwin’s lawyers have already scored a minor victory after the judge agreed to bar discussion of fatal gun shootings on movie sets.
That would have included actor Brandon Lee’s death from a shot to the abdomen while filming a scene from ‘The Crow’ in 1993 when a makeshift bullet was mistakenly left in a gun from a previous scene and struck Lee while filming a scene that called for using blank rounds.
In another win for Baldwin during a pretrial hearing on Monday – this one more significant – the judge ruled that he shouldn’t be put on trial for his role as a producer.
The jury will now solely consider Baldwin’s role as an actor and not as a person in charge of the set and its safety.
In her ruling Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer said: ‘I’m having real difficulty with the state’s position that they want to show that as a producer, he didn’t follow guidelines, and therefore, as an actor, Mr Baldwin did all these things wrong resulting in the death of Halyna Hutchins because as a producer, he allowed this all to happen’.
Baldwin is currently filming a reality TV show about his family, titled ‘The Baldwins’, which stars his wife Hilaria and their seven children under 10.
It is not clear if a camera crew will be joining him in Santa Fe, where he appeared alone on Monday for pretrial arguments.
But it seems entirely possible that he will be recording some sort of content for the show, which is set to air in 2025 on TLC.
Baldwin is currently filming a reality TV show about his family, titled ‘The Baldwins’, which stars his wife Hilaria, seen here with the actor and their seven children under 10
Baldwin announced the reality TV series in a post on Instagram last month, a few weeks before the trial was due to begin.
In the post his children are seen running around their house screaming.
Baldwin says: ‘We’re inviting you into our home to experience the ups and downs; the good, the bad, the wild and the crazy.
‘Home is the place we love to be most’.
As he tried to wrangle his children, Baldwin said: ‘We are the Baldwins, and we’re going to TLC! God help you all!’
The criminal case is not the only court proceedings resulting from the shooting of Hutchins.
In 2022 Baldwin settled a civil lawsuit filed against him by Matthew Hutchins, her widower and the father of their son.
Under the terms Rust continued production at a new location in Montana and Matthew Hutchins, who has called his wife’s death a ‘terrible accident’, became an executive producer.
No date has yet been set for the film’s release.
Hutchins’s family in Ukraine have filed a separate negligence lawsuit against Baldwin too, which he denies.