American actor Alec Baldwin, 64, and lead film armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed will each be charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection to the fatal 2021 shooting on the set of the movie Rust, in which the film’s 42-year-old cinematographer was accidentally shot and killed by Baldwin while filming.
The district attorney’s office in Santa Fe County, New Mexico, confirmed the news to CNN on Tuesday.
“Negligent use of a deadly weapon charges were also filed against ‘Rust’ assistant director David Halls, who has pleaded no contest and has entered into a plea agreement that is pending approval,” the DA’s office said in a media statement.
“Today we have taken another important step in securing justice for Halyna Hutchins,” said District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies. “In New Mexico, no one is above the law and justice will be served.”
Baldwin has maintained several times that he did not pull the trigger of the gun. However, prosecutors are saying that is not true.
“The photos and videos clearly show Baldwin, multiple times, with his finger inside of the trigger guard and on the trigger, while manipulating the hammer and while drawing, pointing, and holstering the revolver,” said prosecutors.
On January 19, Baldwin’s attorney labeled the decision a miscarriage of justice.
“This decision distorts Halyna Hutchins’ tragic death and represents a terrible miscarriage of justice. Mr. Baldwin had no reason to believe there was a live bullet in the gun – or anywhere on the movie set,” Luke Nikas, an attorney for Baldwin, said in his statement.
“He relied on the professionals with whom he worked, who assured him the gun did not have live rounds. We will fight these charges, and we will win.”
The gun which killed Hutchins was supposed to contain only dummy rounds, however, a live round made its way on the film set. It has not been revealed how that occurred. Gutierrez-Reed had loaded the gun, which according to affidavits was one of three she loaded and left on a cart. The movie’s assistant director Dave Halls then took the gun to Baldwin for the scene and said “cold gun” before the accident, which is a term meaning the gun was not loaded with any live rounds.
The gun was then fired, killing Hutchins and injuring the film’s director Joel Souza.
Halls has signed an agreement with prosecutors to plead guilty to the charge of negligent use of a deadly weapon.
This was only the second film Gutierrez-Reed had ever worked on, her first was the film The Old Way, starring Nicolas Cage which had just wrapped filming when she began work on Rust. Reports have been made that Gutierrez-Reed behaved negligently on set, and that Cage had actually yelled at her after she fired a gun for the third time without giving any proper warning.
At one point she even handed a loaded gun to a child actor without properly checking the weapon. It was only when crew members intervened and demanded she check the firearm that she did so.
"I think loading blanks was the scariest thing to me because I was like, 'oh, I don't know anything about it,'" she said in a podcast a month before the shooting.
Gutierrez-Reed is the daughter of Thell Reed, a professional armorer in Hollywood who has worked on films including Miami Vice and Django Unchained.
“We were expecting the charges but they’re absolutely wrong as to Hannah---we expect that she will be found not guilty by a jury and she did not commit manslaughter,” Jason Bowles, an attorney, said in early January.
“She has been emotional about the tragedy but has committed no crime.”
“Gutierrez-Reed was reckless in her responsibility to ensure set safety with the firearm. She failed to correct Baldwin from committing the dangerous and reckless safety violations by pointing the weapon at/towards people and by having his finger on the trigger,” wrote prosecutors.
Involuntary manslaughter is a felony punishable by prison time, but it could take a while before prosecutors are able to secure a conviction, according to legal experts. Involuntary manslaughter for negligence is punishable by up to 18 months in prison plus a $5,000 fine. But if the court finds Baldwin and Gutierrez-Reed guilty of more than simple negligence they could each face five years in prison.
"It's a very aggressive charging decision, and the defense has a strong case," said Neama Rahmani, a personal injury attorney and former prosecutor who was not involved in the Rust case. "Accidents like this are not enough for criminal liability."
The actors union SAG-AFTRA instructs actors to treat guns as though they are loaded with blanks, and to rely on weapons handlers to instruct them on how to use them. The union said in a statement: “An actor’s job is not to be a firearms or weapons expert,” before calling the DA’s charging decision of Baldwin “uninformed.”
"Mr. Baldwin had no reason to believe there was a live bullet in the gun - or anywhere on the movie set. He relied on the professionals with whom he worked, who assured him the gun did not have live rounds. We will fight these charges, and we will win," his attorney Nikas said.
But prosecutors say Baldwin had the option of gun-training before filming, but that he was “distracted and talking on his cellphone” during that training, which is said to have been scheduled for at least an hour but lasted about 30 minutes.
Some reports have been made that the gun had been used with live-ammo for target practice by crew members the morning before the fatal accident. One outlet reported several crew members were taking prop guns from the set for their own personal use to shoot beer cans with live ammunition.
It's believed the lax atmosphere on set was likely a result of producers choosing to hire non-union crew members to replace those who had walked out after being underpaid and mistreated.
Producers for Rust include: Baldwin, Matt DelPiano, Ryan Smith, Anjul Nigam, Nathan Klingher, and Ryan Winterstern. Executive producers include Matthew Helderman, Tyler Gould, Luke Taylor, and Hutchins' widower Matthew Hutchins.