So far what the investigation is showing points to a monumental and repeated collection of avoidable crew ups that led to the death of one person.
My prediction? There will be a great show in the Media but he won’t be going to jail anytime soon or ever. As for Hannah Gutierrez Reed, (the set armorer) she will be legally sacrificed to appease the public. Mind you, she is also responsible for the death and wounding, but she is not the only one truly bearing blame. She is young, took on a responsibility she was clearly not prepared to take and people died: She must ne punished, but should not be the only one.
Have you noticed that Gun Control groups have gone silent or very muted on this incident? At bets they have released some milquetoast statement about the danger of guns or simply gone dark about it. The furious voices that keep demanding lengthy prison times for any negligent shooting suddenly remembered that they had an appointment with the Vietnamese manicurist and could not tweet an equally demanding post against Baldwin. Then again they do depend on the Hollywood Dancing Monkeys for access and donation, so they are very reluctant to crap n their beds.
I believe that we won’t be hearing about this case by thanksgiving.
And that is the country we are living in: Two different Justice systems now rule the land and do not expect the same kind mercies if you screw up.
Seems the production was a truly epic clusterfornication. How much of the mismanagement and toxic environment were Baldwin’s fault, we don’t know yet.
One thing springs to mind, here: anyone responsible for enforcing safety rules around egotistical Hollywood types needs to be less cute li’l waif and more R. Lee Ermey.
And, of course, it’s not just this one production… nor the few recent ones that reportedly had similar issues with some of the same people. Just look at the troubles the Navy has been having the past few years, with collisions and fires and such. And look at Boeing, and at just about everything in DC.
A culture of competence is now considered unacceptable, because apparently only white men are competent (any competent black women you may have known are hereby redefined to be white men). Besides, competent people expect to be paid a lot. Better to fire them on whatever pretext is handy, and replace them with unskilled foreign labor, legal or otherwise.
So for example, a young mother comes home and unloads her small children out of the car. She then realizes she needs to move the car back a few feet to open the garage door (or whatever reason). In doing so, she accidentally runs over her youngest child. An accident, of course, but also negligent homicide too. In many cases like this (and yes, I’ve seen this exact scenario in the news), the prosecutor will decline to press charges because a) it’s an accident, b) the family is grieving and doesn’t deserve more punishment, and c) no jury would convict anyway.
Not all cases of negligent homicide get prosecuted. Accidents happen. This shouldn’t have happened, there should have been precautions taken, but ultimately there was no malice involved. Prosecutorial discretion will most likely be used, along with production company promises to change rules and, of course, some sort of civil action. Most likely a large insurance pay-out and Alec Baldwin’s sincere promise to make sure nothing like that happens again.
While we laser-like focus on this because of nitwit Baldwin and firearms, the simple fact is that no one acted with malice. It will end up either in civil court with a lawsuit or with a very large pay-out. Criminal charges won’t happen. And the young armorer will never work in Hollywood again. IMO.
But this Baldwin case is more like mom just got home from spending two hours in the bar, she is sauced, she is not wearing her glasses and then floors the car running over the kid.
On link does not make a chain, but shit if we don’t have enough to frigging to drag an 18 wheeler across the state.
I don’t disagree, just stating my opinion that there’ll be a pay-out and the criminal charges will evaporate like magic. The prosecutor will mumble something along the lines of no malice, horrible accident, etc. and that’ll be that.
And as much as I don’t like Baldwin, as much as we can Monday morning quarterback about how it should have been done, I don’t know that jail time is truly warranted here. Not all horrible accidents deserve jail time. Drunk driving deaths? Yeah. Stupid and preventable accident? Maybe not, that is a real gray area. I can see your point, just don’t 100% agree. Which is fine.
Of course, if evidence comes out about malice, or deliberate sabotage, then things change.
He was f’ing around with a gun and pointed it at people. While being an arrogant ass. And pulled the trigger.
If he just f’ed around with the gun and pointed it at people without pulling the trigger, none of this would have happened.
If he wasn’t being an arrogant ass, he wouldn’t have been dicking around.
If he pulled the trigger and the gun wasn’t pointed at anyone, then it would have been a stupid negligent discharge and, oops, tee hee, nothing to see here that already hadn’t happened on the set.
This… This is like the mother in our scenario running over the child, hearing the child cry, feeling the car go thump, and then backing the car back over the child to find out what was under the wheel, while being drunk.
In the shooting, Baldwin can’t even say (yet) that he was impaired from booze or drugs and thus not responsible for his actions. Though I’m sure that if the focus comes back onto Baldwin, he’s gonna try that ‘easy out.’
We don’t know whether anyone there acted with malice or not. I’d hope not, but I’ve heard enough inside stories about what the Hollywood set are like (from a relative in the business who’s been there, done that and decided to get out) to not rule out a malicious “prank” somewhere along the line.
We can revisit that point after the investigation, if the results are made public, and the trials, if any. But for the moment, there’s a lot we don’t know.
If you haven’t listened to Michael Bane’s podcast on this topic, it’s worth the hour. (I think you’ve posted on some of his content before).
There’s plenty of blame on plenty of people. His point is that the producer is ultimately to blame because they hire everyone working on the set and create the atmosphere. That’s Alec Baldwin.
Yeah, the legal defense of “it was a terrible accident” is commonly used, but the line between accident and negligence can be hard to determine. That’s ultimately up to the jury.
SiG:
Just no, SiG.
That’s contra-factual.
Baldwin was a Producer (out of something like twelve-such), not The Producer. He brought the script, and his name, and was given a producer credit in return.
Baldwin has zero say in production decisions, day-to-day.
That guy was Producer Ryan Donnell Smith.
Baldwin was not the Line Producer, who directly supervises production activities.
That person was Gabrielle Pickle.
Baldwin was not the Unit Production Manager, who hires and fires everyone “below the line”, i.e., anyone who isn’t the director, actor, or writer, but all the working crew, from 1stAD to the lowest newb production assistant, and is the one entirely responsible for keeping the production running smoothly, on time, and on budget, every single minute of the day.
That guy was Raw Walters.
Link:https://deadline.com/2021/10/alec-baldwin-shooting-rust-producers-liability-haylna-hutchins-death-investigation-1234864223/
Note that none of them are named “Alec Baldwin”.
Any attempt to drag Baldwin into that hole on that basis is grasping at straws out of pure animus, not because of the facts of the situation. You may as well blame pixies and nargles.
The armorer’s entire job is to
1) Not bring a functional live weapon on a primary set, ever.
2) Not bring live rounds on a primary set, ever.
3) Not load live rounds into a live gun on a primary set, ever.
4) Have any loading of dummy or blank rounds appropriately co-supervised by her designated assistant.
5) Maintain sole and direct custody of the loaded (with dummy rounds or blanks) non-bullet-firing prop weapon, at all times, until it’s put into the actor’s hands, and take it from them as soon as its presence is no longer required, always, without fail.
Nobody listed in 1-5 was named Alec Baldwin either.
The armorer was Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, and the designated asst. was AD Dave Halls (which was, of itself, a mistake).
She failed at all five of those tasks, and dozens and dozens more, despite being specifically hire to perform them.
Reed represented herself as competent to take on the job, not having killed anyone (miraculously) on a recent production where she fulfilled the same job. And the UPM hired her. Period.
That’s your guilty party.
Her prosecution is indicated, and contra Miguel’s position, it isn’t a “sacrifice”.
She’s actually wholly and totally responsible for failing to fulfill damned near all 79 specific production safety guidelines with respect to prop weapons, real weapons, and ammunition for both, in place since before she was born.
Calling her prosecution a “sacrifice” is like calling Charles Manson’s conviction for conspiracy to commit mass murder, a “sacrifice”.
Reed just has a lower body count, but not for lack of trying, obviously.
The miracle on this production, given what transpired, isn’t that she managed to kill somebody. The outright miracle is that given her gross and global negligence, that it took her twelve days of production to do so.
Which was exactly the position of the camera assistants when they all walked out that very morning. Those guys are jet-fuel geniuses.
As one of the producers, Baldwin is a constituent part of the production company which owns the beast, and which, corporately will have civil liability for what happened. As an LLC, that will consist of their production insurance, and nothing else. Their only other assets are an empty bank account, the rights to a script, and half a can of finished film, which is worth nothing at this point. If they fail to complete production, they probably stand to lose half or all their funding from production incentives from NM, so they’ll be left with negative millions in assets.
If Baldwin goes to trial, it’s far more likely to be as a witness than a defendant.
What he did was perform and rehearse according to the script, which facts are evidenced by no one bailing out and taking cover when he pulled his gun out on the day.
Reed’s story is that she has “no idea” how live rounds got into the gun (which presence, as something also as streng verboten as the live rounds neither she nor her lawyers have yet explained). She’s going with the “that’s not my dope!” defense, which has worked so well since the ’60s.
She needs to fry.
Baldwin’s penalty in this should begin and end at the karma of having killed someone, and he’s going to be hit in the face with it like a frozen mackerel for the rest of his life. And should. It’s going to cling to him every minute of what’s left of his pathetic existence. There’s a reason I piled on there from the get-go.
But that’s exactly the extent of it, and should be,no matter how much we all may wish it were otherwise.
Brevity is the soul of wit.
Really? Explain how that works with a half-wit.
And it takes five times as long to explain an error as it does to disseminate it.
Few thoughts.
First of all, (IANAL warning) I do not believe NM law will allow the person who actually pulled the trigger to walk without any trial, or at a minimum, an appearance before a magistrate. So, Alec will at least have to appear.
But, the real question is who is really to blame here. And, I do believe it is the armorer, with the personnel director or director (not sure who hired her) as complicit in the act. The assistant direct is complicit as well, because they handled the firearm, and told Alec it was safe, when they did not know that themselves.
Now, as much as I would like to see Baldwin get some kind of punishment, this really was a series of preventable mistakes that led to a person dying. An accident that could have been easily prevented, but still an accident. Had any of us been in a similar situation, we would want the law to treat our errors with a gentle gaze.
Final note.
The actors are already calling for a ban on use of real guns on set. I saw an ad the other day with a bunch of recognizable faces calling for no more guns on set.
Curiously, this just demonstrates how truly clueless they are about their own industry. How many trigger pulls happen a week on the literally thousands of movie/TV sets around the world? A million? Five million? And in the past 30 years there were only two or three negligent discharges that resulted in a death?
If they are really interested in saving lives, they should call for a ban on all stunts.
Everyone keeps whimpering about such a terrible accident, I say bullshit in spades. The live round wasn’t put in the pistol by accident, someone put it there deliberately. To cause harm, I don’t know. The pistol wasn’t inspected, that wasn’t an accident, they ALL deliberately did not check the pistol. The pistol wasn’t dropped, nor did it fire on its own, the round didn’t cook off, no accident. The single action pistol did not cock its own hammer, it was deliberately pulled back, no accident. The trigger didn’t pull itself, dropping the hammer on the live round, no accident. The pistol didn’t draw itself from the holster, it was pulled on purpose and (reportedly) dry fired once, no accident. It didn’t draw itself, cock the hammer and fire a second, fatal time, no accident. It didn’t aim itself at the victim, camera, mirror, second victim, in a crowd, take your pick for version, every step was done deliberately. It was deliberately not checked by the person that removed it from the supposed safe place. It was deliberately not checked by the armorer. It was deliberately not checked by the assistant suckas,,, I mean director. It was deliberately not checked by that fvcking shitforbrains baldwin. Shitforbrains took the pistol and did not check it, repeatedly drew and aimed at people, then pulled the trigger. Repeatedly. Think about that.
Not my opinion, all facts. Prove me wrong, with the information so far released. The cops investigating this clusterfuck already know what happened, now politics/asskissing/famous fvcking get out of jail free cards, are being thrown around like crazy, to protect a shitforbrains cretin, ball(less)dwin.
Baldwin did what he was hired to do.
He had no duty to “check” an prop gun loaded with dummy rounds.
There were two separate people who were hired to do that.
If he were on a live range with live guns and live ammo, a different standard applies, but this wasn’t that.
He’s not negligent for expecting that the person hired to provide, load, and check the weapon actually did so, any more than you are negligent for thinking the guy who fixed your building’s elevator did it right, just before it crashes down and kills someone. If you own the building, you have civil liability, as The Production Company does in this case. But unless you told the elevator guy to sabotage the brake cables, or cut corners on maintenance, or cut the cables yourself, you have no criminal responsibility.
Baldwin drawing, cocking, and puling the trigger on a non-firing prop gun, loaded only with dummy rounds, while pointed directly at the camera (and thus necessarily at the people around it) was the exact scene in the script they were rehearsing. That’s his exact job.
The fact that it was live weapon, with a real bullet hidden in the cylinder, Russian-roulette style, wasn’t his fault, it was the fault of the person(s) charged with making sure that such a thing could never happen. The armorer.
And him failing to spot a live round amidst a bunch of dummy rounds wasn’t going to magically happen, whether he himself “checked” or not, because the armorer had also failed to “conspicuously mark” the two types, so they couldn’t be confused. Along with 50 other specific failings.
Through gross negligence, she totally failed that assignment, and that meets the standard for charging her with criminal involuntary manslaughter.
QED
Change the conditions, and then you can change the rules.
But you can’t take rules intended for real guns and real bullets designed to kill people, and try to apply them to a situation where they use fake guns and no bullets, and it’s designed to harm no one., and they all laugh about it and go to lunch afterwards.
Apples and oranges.
You’re in church, pull out your real gun, with real bullets, and shoot a nun?
You’re going to jail.
You’re on a movie with pretend guns, and no bullets, and you shoot a nun in a church?
You’re Tyne Daly backing up Dirty Harry in The Enforcer, and the audience cheers.
“One of these things is not like the other…”
Sweet Shiva, man, have you even seen a John Wick movie in the last 5 years?
Pointing guns right at people and deliberately pulling the trigger is what actors do.
I never even imagined, when I started out, that I’d have to explain anything this fundamentally obvious to supposed “gun guys”.
Facts have no position when a lynching is desired. Kind of like how facts were jettisoned following the beatifications of St. Treyvon, St. Brown, or St. Floyd and associated desire to railroad Zimmerman et al. Remember how facts were ignored, incidents were made up out of whole cloth, and other crimes against the truth.
It’s the exact same thing, only it’s one of ‘them’ up for the noose, which makes it okay. Because double standards aren’t bad when we do it.
It occurs to me that part of the conflation of Baldwin-pulled-the-trigger, with Baldwin-is-guilty-of-murder, is due to the fact that he is a repeatedly established asshole, in addition to being on Team Tyranny.
I agree with Aesop. Baldwin’s already contused kharma, is only re-injured by this shooting. Likely NOT criminally, but nevertheless a weight he has to bear to the extent that he is not a complete sociopath. (An assertion of something that is not in evidence).
Unless it can be reasonable proven that Baldwin did not know that all props on set were rubber ducks and that he is functionally retarded enough to not know the difference between a toy and a real gun then he did what he did – killed somebody out of at best gross negligence.
Given that it has been reported that crew and cast were capping off live rounds… seems impossible.
That said, if I were on the jury and his single line defense was literally and simply, “I am too stupid to know what a gun is”, I’d aquit. But recommend indefinite institution for the criminally insane.
Nope. If the argument is “I’m too stupid to know what a gun is,” then screwing around with the gun, which he did, makes him still guilty as sin.
Kid gets in car, never taken a test, been taught, has a license. Frucking around and runs over Mrs. Gertrude, the 99yo little lady next door, after pointing the car at her and stomping on the accelerator and continuing to steer towards her. By the “I’m too stupid to know what a gun is” argument, kid has no responsibility in the death of Mrs. Gertrude. Yeah, bullshit flag on play.
Alec “I’m too stupid to know what a gun is, but am photographed talking on an expensive cell phone” Baldwin pointed the gun at the victims. While fucking around.
Guilty. Just because he’s a functional retard (according to Aesop) doesn’t absolve him of the guilt of his crime.
How many other times has Alec “I need to wear a helmet in the shower because I’m stupid” Baldwin been on a set and held a gun? He seemed to handle it well on “Hunt for Red October.” And at least a few other shows and movies I’ve seen.” So he has a history of handling firearms, even prop guns.
Personally, I hope New Mexico buries this turd deep into the State Prison. I so want karma to run over his dogma.
As a side example. Say some dude off the street wanders into Aesop’s hospital and goes and turns on some expensive piece of equipment like an MRI machine and kills someone. Can he, the Some Dude, use the excuse that he can’t program his tv remote as a reasonable defense against any charges of negligent homicide or other crimes?
Just because Alec “I dribble down my shirt because I’m too stupid to close my mouth” Baldwin is a function retard, even though he can operate a car, a cell phone, put his clothes on, not pee on himself, and other complex tasks more difficult than “Thou shalt not fark around with objects in a deadly way” doesn’t absolve him from his crime.
Heck, even Gary Bussey, who is now basically an animated vegetable, is more responsible for his actions than Alec “I wear “I’m with Stupid” t-shirts with the arrow pointing up” Baldwin, according to the Hollyweird syncophants.
Baldwin’s defense has nothing whatsoever to do with his stupidity, so the argument is is not (and never has been) “too stupid to know what a gun is.”
His defense is that the person the production hired, with the sole job function of not bringing a real gun onto set, and not loading live bullets into prop guns, failed miserably on both tasks. Among a plethora of failures almost too numerous to count.
When you deliberately misstate the argument, you get everything after that wrong.
Last night the Boston area TV news shows Baldwin talking to some reporters in Manchester, VT. No indication why he was there. He was saying things along the lines of “we need new rules to keep this from happening again”.
Yeah right, that’s like the town drunk crashing his car into a pedestrian and then saying “I think we need to have some rules that say you can’t drive while drunk”. Nice try. I assume he’s doing this as a desperate attempt to make people believe he isn’t a maniac idiot blatantly violating rules that have been around for at least half a century, rules that every competent firearms used knows inside and out.