Alec Baldwin has been looking down the barrel of potential criminal charges after he fired a fatal shot on the set of his film “Rust” last year in New Mexico. Baldwin initiated a negligent discharge that killed his Director of Photography Halyna Hutchins and wounded the film’s director Joel Souza.
Now, the local prosecutor, Mary Carmack-Altwies, has asked the state of New Mexico for special supplemental funding to prosecute “between one and four people,” apparently including Baldwin, over the homicide.
She needs the money, she says, to counter the big-name defense attorneys who would no doubt represent Mr. Baldwin. The state has approved over $300,000 in special funding to initiate the case.
Baldwin initially claimed he didn’t pull the trigger on the gun that fired the fatal shot. Amazingly he made that far-fetched claim despite the fact that cameras reportedly recorded the shooting.
Baldwin claimed “The gun just went off.” Literally no one really believed the famously volatile actor, though, and FBI investigators subsequently concluded that the gun in Baldwin’s hand that fateful day “could not be made to fire without a pull of the trigger.“
Oops.
The Daily Mail has the latest in the case . . .
New Mexico prosecutors have indicated they may charge Alec Baldwin over the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of his movie Rust last year, after the actor handed over his cellphone to be considered as evidence.
In a letter to the state’s financial board, asking for funding to prosecute the high profile case, Santa Fe District Attorney District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies said she was ‘ready’ to file charges against four people.
She stopped short of confirming the charges she planned to bring, but said was ‘certainly looking all the homicide statutes and any gun statutes under New Mexico criminal code’.
‘One of the possible defendants is well known movie actor Alec Baldwin,’ she wrote.
Carmack-Altwies asked for $635,000 to prosecute the case, saying she needed the money to go up against well-paid attorneys.
The state agreed to award her office $317,000 to appoint a special prosecutor to take the case forward.
The request was quietly submitted on August 30 and was recently approved. After it was filed, Baldwin – who welcomed his seventh child with wife Hilaria last week – listed his Hamptons home for sale.
It sounds like Baldwin’s either freeing up money for his criminal defense, or perhaps he’s looking to shield assets from any civil claims.
He has always maintained that he did not pull the trigger, and that the blame lies with the stunt handlers and prop managers who should have ensured the gun was ‘cold’ – empty of live bullets.
‘I would never point a gun at anyone and pull a trigger, no,’ he said in an interview about the shooting.
He lays the blame with the armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who he says was in charge of ensuring the safety of the props.
Ultimately, as the producer of the ‘Rust’ production, the buck stops not with Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, but with Bladwin himself.
In addition, the ‘Rust’ movie was an ultra-low-budget production that was reportedly racked with all manner of problems. Among them was a turnover of staff and basic safety protocols that were “all but ignored.”
Cutting corners has already cost the production company. New Mexico has already fined the film’s makers $137,000 for the safety protocol failures.
If Baldwin is ultimately charged and convicted, a prison term may just be the tip of the iceberg for him. The lawsuits — Hutchins’ family has already filed a wrongful death suit against Baldwin — could dog him for years and cost him tens of millions of dollars in legal fees and damages awards.
