Alec Baldwin’s manslaughter trial for Rust film set shooting begins in New Mexico
Almost three years after the fatal shooting on the movie set of Rust, prosecutors will begin to lay out their case against Alec Baldwin as the actor’s involuntary manslaughter trial starts.
The proceedings were expected to kick off on Wednesday with the prosecution and defense offering their opening statements.
Baldwin is accused of involuntary manslaughter for his role in the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who was killed on the film’s New Mexico set in October 2021. The actor and producer on the western was rehearsing when he pointed a prop firearm at Hutchins and the weapon fired a single bullet, killing Hutchins and injuring director Joel Souza.
The trial will focus extensively on the Colt .45 used in the shooting. Baldwin has long claimed that he did not fire the weapon and that it had malfunctioned. The prosecution contends that forensic testing on the gun shows the actor had pulled the trigger and that Baldwin was negligent in his handling of it.
This criminal case against Baldwin has been winding its way through the New Mexico legal system since January 2024, when a grand jury indicted him on a charge of involuntary manslaughter. Prosecutors had previously charged him with the same offense in 2023 but later dropped the charge and said they needed more time to review the evidence.
Baldwin’s legal team had repeatedly attempted to get the charge against him dropped, and last month sought dismissal on grounds that prosecutors had allowed potentially “exculpatory evidence” to be destroyed in the FBI testing of the firearm before the defense could examine it. Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer denied those requests.
On Tuesday, proceedings moved forward as a jury of 11 women and five men were selected from a pool of 70 people. Only three of the 70 potential jurors said they had not seen or heard anything about the case, but all of those selected said that they had not formed an opinion about the incident and that they felt they could be fair.
“Our job – the attorneys for both sides – is to make sure we get a fair and impartial jury,” prosecutor Kari Morrissey said on Tuesday. “We want to get jurors who can be fair to the state. We also want to get jurors who can be fair to Mr Baldwin.”
The trial comes after Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the chief weapons handler on the Rust set, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 18 months in prison. Legal experts have said that prosecutors may have a harder time proving Baldwin’s guilt after Gutierrez-Reed was deemed responsible in her trial.
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