By all accounts, it was an accident everybody noticed coming, however the questions and chaos surrounding the demise of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins whereas filming the Alec Baldwin film Rust have solely grown extra quite a few within the two years for the reason that deadly incident.
In the newest growth in an ongoing authorized battle, armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the chief weapons handler for the movie, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter on Wednesday regardless of supporters arguing that she was being scapegoated; in any case, she reportedly spent the weeks main as much as the taking pictures warning her supervisors of unsafe situations whereas looking for — and being denied — extra alternatives to take care of gun security.
Santa Fe District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies introduced precisely a yr in the past that the county would carry expenses in opposition to Baldwin, who was one of many movie’s producers, and Gutierrez-Reed for the cinematographer’s demise. Hutchins was killed in October 2021 on a ranch close to Santa Fe, after a prop gun Baldwin was holding by accident discharged. The movie’s director, Joel Souza, was additionally non-fatally injured within the taking pictures.
Baldwin was formally charged, however prosecutors quickly dropped all expenses in opposition to him. Yet the costs had been dropped with out prejudice, which means prosecutors might nonetheless select to refile them or file totally different expenses in opposition to Baldwin sooner or later. Prosecutors claimed to have dropped and subsequently refiled the costs in January 2024 solely as a result of that they had new forensic proof relating to the gun Baldwin fired — a Pietta duplicate of a .45 Long Colt that appears to be the opposite central determine on this case. Baldwin has lengthy maintained that he by no means pulled the set off, however a new forensics report printed in August claimed, in an obvious contradiction of earlier exams on the prop, that he should have.
On the power of that new report, the prosecution revived the case in opposition to Baldwin. He can solely be convicted of one of many two totally different counts of involuntary manslaughter in opposition to him, however faces as much as 18 months in jail. Baldwin’s legal professionals responded by saying, “We look forward to our day in court.”
The back-and-forth prosecution follows an already prolonged investigation into the incident by the Santa Fe sheriff’s workplace that concluded in October 2022. The report, which was essential in prosecutors’ preliminary determination to file expenses, centered on lapses in security procedures on the movie’s extremely criticized set, although it failed to find out an important issue — precisely how loaded weapons with reside ammunition made it onto the set. This problem stays unsettled regardless of quite a few investigations and lawsuits surrounding the manufacturing surroundings on the Rust set, alongside conflicting views of the accident itself.
The task of blame has additionally proved elusive on a set suffering from claims of labor exploitation, rushed work, unsafe situations, and “very fast and loose” dealing with of weaponry.
At the middle of the case are two unsolvable mysteries
At the middle of the case in opposition to Baldwin and Gutierrez-Reed are two questions: Did Baldwin pull the set off? And how did reside rounds get on set to start with?
No one disputes the broad info of what occurred on October 21, 2021. Prior to the filming of the scene, Gutierrez-Reed, a props assistant who doubled because the on-set armorer, examined the gun. She appeared contained in the barrel, spun the barrel, visually confirmed what she believed had been dummy bullets — faux bullets containing no reside ammunition — and handed the gun over to assistant director and manufacturing security coordinator David Halls to take to the filming location. (Halls prevented dealing with trial by pleading responsible to negligent use of a lethal weapon.)
Safety protocol requires Gutierrez-Reed to have checked all of the bullets in entrance of Baldwin herself — and she or he claims to have meant to take action, asking Halls to let her know if Baldwin required her to come back all the way down to the filming location and immediately study the gun. But in response to a lawsuit later filed by Gutierrez-Reed, the gun wasn’t really meant for use in that afternoon’s filming, and Halls was simply “sitting in” with it, preserving it in case it turned vital for later use — which it did when Baldwin determined to rehearse an unscheduled scene that required the gun.
At that time, Halls ought to have summoned Gutierrez-Reed to come back again and additional study the bullets contained in the gun. Instead, he yelled, “Cold gun!” — “cold” which means a gun that was not loaded with reside ammunition — to warn the crew {that a} gun was about to be discharged. Then he handed it over to Baldwin. While Baldwin was following Hutchins’s directions to purpose the gun towards the digicam, the gun discharged, placing each her and Souza.
Baldwin has all the time been adamant that he by no means pulled the set off. He has explained that he would by no means pull the set off on a prop gun whereas it was pointed at one other human (although security protocols forbid pointing any prop gun at any human for any cause), and that the gun discharged independently.
He as an alternative claims he cocked the gun — that’s, he pulled the hammer again — and that when he launched it, the gun all of a sudden discharged by itself. Later, FBI forensics studies on the identical gun apparently contradicted Baldwin, suggesting that this specific prop gun might solely be discharged by pulling the set off after the gun was cocked or partially cocked.
Yet these studies, in response to Baldwin’s legal professional, downplayed the truth that FBI investigators tried repeatedly to discharge it and had been unable to take action, both by pulling the set off or by way of another means. “The gun fired in testing only one time — without having to pull the trigger — when the hammer was pulled back and the gun broke in two different places,” legal professional Luke Nikas said. “The FBI was unable to fire the gun in any prior test, even when pulling the trigger, because it was in such poor condition.”
The new forensics report appears extremely contestable from the outset as a result of, once more, the gun fell aside after the one and solely time the FBI was capable of get it to fireside. In order to conduct testing, the brand new forensics professional, Lucien Haag, needed to exchange the damaged gun components, so his evaluation was not primarily based on the gun’s actual situation on the time of the taking pictures.
Haag’s testing discovered that the gun, with changed components, was unable to discharge with out at the least two kilos of stress being exerted to drag the set off. He additionally cited the seemingly careless means Baldwin tended to position his fingers close to the triggers of weapons as proof that he might have fired the gun. If Haag’s testimony sways a jury, it’ll probably be an important proof within the case.
The assumption that Baldwin should have unsafely dealt with the weapon partially led Hutchins’s household to file a lawsuit in opposition to him in February 2022. That go well with, which has since been settled, named Baldwin, Gutierrez-Reed, the ammo provider, and a litany of Rust producers however took as its main declare the allegation that Baldwin “recklessly shot and killed Halyna Hutchins,” and that he together with the workers had “failed to perform industry standard safety checks and follow basic gun safety rules while using real guns to produce the movie Rust, with fatal consequences.” Baldwin filed his personal lawsuit in November 2022 in opposition to Gutierrez-Reed and the Rust producers, alleging that they had been culpable for handing him a loaded gun to start with.
And he has some extent: If the gun had contained blanks when discharged — if it had really been a “cold” gun when Halls handed it over to Baldwin — Hutchins would nonetheless be alive.
So how did a gun crammed with reside ammunition make it onto the set? This is the place issues get much more difficult — and we see much more finger-pointing.
No one can clarify how the reside ammo wound up on set
While somebody clearly bodily introduced reside ammo to the set, nobody appears to know who it was. A search warrant filed in October 2021 speculated that Gutierrez-Reed may need by accident bought reside ammunition together with dummy bullets from the gun provider, PDQ Arm and Prop LLC, and its proprietor Seth Kenney. And Gutierrez-Reed speculated to investigators that reside ammo had been “mixed in” with dummy bullets. In January 2022, she filed a lawsuit in opposition to the corporate accountable for supplying weapons and ammunition to the movie manufacturing. The go well with paints an image of a chaotic manufacturing stuffed with underpaid and overworked workers — Gutierrez-Reed was to be paid simply $7,500 for doing her two jobs on the micro-budget set — and comprises ominously passive language in regards to the supply of the ammo, indicating {that a} mysterious field of dummy rounds for the prop gun “appeared on set” the day of the taking pictures.
Gutierrez-Reed all however immediately implies within the go well with — the standing of which seems to be unclear — that the manufacturing’s main prop supervisor conspired with Kenney to carry reside ammo onto the set with a purpose to, basically, set Gutierrez-Reed up. This, she argues, was as a result of Kenney and the prop supervisor each resented her as a result of she had criticized the prop supervisor for her function in one of many two earlier unintended gun discharges on set.
However, as a part of the invention in that lawsuit, texts from months earlier between Kenney and Gutierrez-Reed had been made public — texts from a special film set — during which Gutierrez-Reed expressed her curiosity in utilizing prop weapons to fireside “hot rounds,” or reside ammunition, after hours and never whereas on set.
Not solely that, however a report by The Wrap alleged that earlier on the morning of the incident, crew members on the set took prop weapons — which aren’t supposed for use to fireside something however blanks — to make use of in a recreation of “plinking,” which concerned discharging reside ammo in rounds of goal apply.
So was Gutierrez-Reed the particular person accountable for “mixing” ammo? Was it assorted crew members who took the weapons, crammed them with reside ammo, after which changed them with out anybody being the wiser?
At her trial, the prosecution argued efficiently that Gutierrez-Reed was certainly accountable for bringing the reside ammo on set, preserving it there for weeks, after which by no means doing security checks. Gutierrez-Reed was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and located not responsible on a cost of tampering with proof that her protection claimed had been introduced solely as an tried character smear. One juror instructed the Associated Press afterward that her failure to carry out security checks was what satisfied them of Gutierrez-Reed’s culpability. But Gutierrez-Reed was additionally reportedly very overworked and had orders from her supervisor to spend much less time on gun security and coaching.
In reality, even after Gutierrez-Reed’s conviction — which her attorneys have mentioned they’ll attraction — the one factor that appears clear is that Rust was a set with disastrous working situations.
Hutchins’s demise was a part of a disastrous working surroundings
Most of the general public details about the situations on the Rust set comes from a report accomplished in April 2022 by the New Mexico Occupational Health & Safety Bureau (OHSB). As a results of the OHSB’s investigation, the company fined Rust about $137,000 for office security violations, the utmost quantity allowed underneath state legislation.
The OHSB report discovered a number of issues with Rust’s on-set manufacturing surroundings, concluding that the manufacturing “demonstrated plain indifference to the safety of employees … failed to follow company safety procedures, which likely would have prevented the accident from occurring … [and] “did not ensure their own safety procedures [were] followed at the worksite.” The OHSB additionally castigated particular producers for ignoring their staff’ repeatedly voiced issues about on-set security, and speeding the staff who had been tasked with making certain that security. One worker who voiced issues and was overridden was Gutierrez-Reed.
“Hannah was tasked with doing two jobs including props assistant and the very important job as armorer but not given adequate time and training days to do so,” Gutierrez-Reed’s legal professional instructed ABC News, “despite repeated requests or the respect required of the armorer’s position and responsibilities.”
Indeed, every week earlier than the taking pictures, Rust’s line producer, Gabrielle Pickle, emailed Gutierrez-Reed to reprimand her for spending an excessive amount of time on her armory duties — which included inspecting all weapons to make sure their security — and never sufficient on her different duties as prop assistant. Gutierrez-Reed replied that “since we’ve started I’ve had a lot of days where my job should only be to focus on the guns and everyone’s safety,” and that “there are working guns on set every day and those are ultimately going to be a priority because when they are not that’s when dangerous mistakes can happen.”
According to the OHSB report, there have been two different unintended discharges on set, each on October 16, 5 days earlier than the incident that killed Hutchins. A 3rd harmful incident concerned a particular results explosive system by accident exploding. It was partly in response to those incidents that one in all Hutchins’s digicam assistants, Lane Luper, give up the job the day earlier than Hutchins’s demise — citing rampant security violations in his resignation e-mail, amongst many different exploitative work situations.
Another crew member, Jonas Huerta, additionally resigned the identical day, once more citing exploitative, unsafe, and rushed working situations. “I also feel anxious on set,” he wrote in his resignation e-mail. “I’ve seen first hand our AD [the assistant director, Halls] rush to get shots and he skips over important protocols.”
The reinstated legal expenses associated to Baldwin appear to contain his particular act in dealing with the weapon, relatively than his broader function as one of many movie’s producers. But the dearth of expenses filed in opposition to any of the opposite producers on set, a number of of whom extra immediately oversaw the frazzled, unsafe filming situations that led to the a number of unintended weapons discharges, is puzzling. The OHSB report criticized particular producers, together with head producer Ryan Smith, for failing to take office security issues significantly regardless of repeated complaints by workers. Pickle additionally confronted scrutiny for actively scolding Gutierrez-Reed, together with ordering her off armorer obligation and limiting her time spent coaching the solid and crew on the right way to safely deal with weapons.
It appears baffling, given this sort of proof, that Santa Fe prosecutors opted to not carry expenses of negligence in opposition to the producers — expenses that appear clearly provable in response to the out there proof. The preliminary expenses of involuntary manslaughter in opposition to Baldwin and Gutierrez-Reed appeared a lot more durable to show given how confused their roles had been — although the uncertainty hasn’t quashed right-wing pundits like Tucker Carlson from arguing that Baldwin embodies Hollywood’s hypocrisy in decrying gun violence solely to defend their very own proper to make use of weapons in leisure.
Baldwin’s lawyer, Nikas, has vowed to “fight these charges,” as he mentioned in an announcement final yr. (Baldwin has since put his dwelling within the Hamptons up on the market, probably to assist finance his protection.) “Mr. Baldwin had no reason to believe there was a live bullet in the gun — or anywhere on the movie set,” he mentioned. “He relied on the professionals with whom he worked, who assured him the gun did not have live rounds.”
What does appear clear is that, on this set and certain on many others, Gutierrez-Reed was one in all numerous crew members who had been underpaid, overworked, harangued by equally frazzled supervisors, and pushed to chop corners to economize and time. Five days earlier than Hutchins’s demise, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) narrowly prevented an worker strike in response to pervasive exploitative situations all through Hollywood, together with the prevalence of minimal wage gigs, stretched employees, strenuous labor situations, and vast gender gaps in pay charges and alternatives.
Hutchins’s demise, as tragic as it’s, appears to be the newest end result of horrible working situations discovered not simply on set however all through the trade. The creation of streaming media, the pressure of supplying content material in a post-pandemic world, and a widespread tradition of demanding tireless work for little pay all contribute to the form of callous disregard for security and for workers that resulted within the Rust working surroundings.
And whereas unionization efforts are bringing some significant change to the trade, Hutchins’s demise arguably stands as a far higher indictment of the trade as a complete than particular person indictments in opposition to Rust’s on-set gamers might ever be.
Update, March 7, 2024, 9:55 am ET: This story was initially printed on January 23, 2023, and has been up to date a number of occasions, most not too long ago to replicate the conviction of Hannah Gutierrez-Reed.
