Things have been fairly quiet on the tragic shooting of Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the ranch set of the independent Western, Rust, near Santa Fe, New Mexico, by actor/producer Alec Baldwin, but news is breaking across many outlets that Baldwin has just been indicted again and charged with involuntary manslaughter. Baldwin was previously charged in January last year, but then the charges were dropped months later, as Baldwin’s lawyers argued that his gun wasn’t working properly.
In one of the more complicated on-set deaths in recent memory, the 65-year-old Baldwin was rehearsing a scene when a gun, presumed to firing blanks, went off, shooting the 45-year-old Hutchins, also wounding director Joel Souza. For some time, the film’s propmaster and assistant director were shouldering much of the blame, but it was Baldwin that fired the weapon that killed the cinematographer.
In February 2023, Baldwin was returning to finish the film in Montana at the Yellowstone Film Ranch with Marcel the Shell DP Bianca Cline signed on to finish the film with plans to donate her salary to charity. Producer Grant Hill (Titanic) came onto the project at the same time as two new safety officers, Gary Jensen and Paul Jordan, with no functioning firearms and essentially a new crew with original producers and crew members facing lawsuits from Hutchins’ family.
There hasn’t been much development, but today, a grand jury of 12 convened at the First Judicial District Court of New Mexico in Santa Fe to indict Baldwin almost a year to the date when the last charges were dropped. At least 8 jurors had to agree for the indictment to go through.
A charge like the one Baldwin faces could carry up to 18 months in prison, but Baldwins’ lawyers, Luke Nikas and Alex Spiro, released the statement, “We look forward to our day in court.”
Some reporting for this story came from The New York Times and CNN.
