The Alec Baldwin Trial
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@Doctor-Phibes said in The Alec Baldwin Trial:
@LuFins-Dad said in The Alec Baldwin Trial:
If you ignore all the Hollywood trappings and movie star stuff, this was a workplace safety incident. It's the responsibility of management to ensure that adequate safety procedures are in place and are adhered to.Back in March
https://nodebb.the-new-coffee-room.club/topic/30160/rust-armorer-guilty?_=1720914856867
on Tuesday, they had two expert witnesses from NM OSHA who testified that the workplace was unsafe, and that the ultimate responsibility for safety on set rests on the production company. It's their job to ensure training, staffing, etc are in place. Sounds like Hannah didn't have the resources, right?
Then THE NEXT DAY, they called another witness (a director/writer) who testified that many of the camera crew walked off the set because it was too dangerous. Then, when asked who can stop filming, he said, "Traditionally, only the director can yell 'Cut!' Then he goes on to say, but if there's anything dangerous about to happen, anyone, especially the armorer, can stop shooting a scene. And she didn't.
The defense claimed that Gutierrez-Reed didn't know how the live round got into Baldwin's pistol. Well, of course she didn't know - but it was her job to ensure that the weapon was safe.
The entire production was low-budget, sloppy and careless.
@George-K said in The Alec Baldwin Trial:
The entire production was low-budget, sloppy and careless.
I wonder how commonplace that is on movie sets.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/14/arts/alec-baldwin-rust-lawsuits.html
Now that the criminal case is over, his legal team will be able to focus on the civil litigation against Mr. Baldwin, who was also a producer on “Rust.”
A lawsuit that Ms. Hutchins’s husband, Matthew Hutchins, filed several months after the fatal shooting in October 2021 accuses Mr. Baldwin of reckless conduct while handling the gun, and the production of cost-cutting measures that endangered the crew. The suit says that the production failed to follow industry-standard gun safety rules, rushed filming and allowed an inexperienced armorer to handle weapons.
The lawsuit against Mr. Baldwin and Rust Movie Productions, the company overseeing the film, had at one point seemed to be resolved by a settlement agreement. But Mr. Hutchins’s lawyers wrote in a court filing this year that the “Rust” producers were behind on some of the settlement payments, which the filing said should have been paid in full by June 2023. Ms. Hutchins’s young son, who was 9 years old when she died, is a party to the settlement agreement.
“We respect the court’s decision,” Brian J. Panish, a lawyer for Mr. Hutchins, said in a statement on Friday after the criminal case was dismissed. “We look forward to presenting all the evidence to a jury and holding Mr. Baldwin accountable for his actions in the senseless death of Halyna Hutchins.”
In a brief phone interview, Mr. Panish said that the producers were “in breach of the agreement” and that “the civil case is still proceeding.”
A lawyer for Mr. Baldwin did not immediately respond to requests for comment.His defense has argued that he was not negligent in his handling of the gun that day because he had no idea that the revolver contained a live round, which was banned on the set. Witnesses said that the gun was declared “cold,” meaning it did not contain any live ammunition. Two other members of the production failed to catch the live round that had been loaded into the gun.
“More than anyone else on that set, Baldwin has been wrongfully viewed as the perpetrator of this tragedy,” one of his lawyers, Luke Nikas, wrote in court papers in 2022, as the litigation was piling up.
The figures of the settlement between Mr. Hutchins and the “Rust” producers were not disclosed, but part of the agreement was that Mr. Hutchins would become an executive producer on a revived production of the film. Once his wife’s work was released to the world, the family could benefit from the film’s earnings.
Mr. Baldwin agreed to return to the role of Harland Rust, a hardened outlaw helping his grandson escape from the law. The production reconvened in Montana with the same director, Joel Souza, who was wounded in the shooting. A new armorer ensured that no guns capable of firing would be used on the set.
OJ was found not guilty of murder, but liable in a civil trial.
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I think Baldwin will be found guilty in the civil trial. The question will be his level of negligence and the size of the award.
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I think Baldwin will be found guilty in the civil trial. The question will be his level of negligence and the size of the award.
@Jolly said in The Alec Baldwin Trial:
I think Baldwin will be found guilty in the civil trial.
I agree. The law in NM is pretty clear, and the case was thrown out, basically, on a technicality.
Emily D. Baker, an attorney who does law analysis stated, “this [ruling] doesn't say Baldwin didn't do anything wrong. What this finding by the court says is that prosecution and law enforcement did something so wrong that the only remedy here is to not prosecute Baldwin.”
For those that didn't follow closely, here's what happened:
Del Reed, father of Hannah Gutierrez Reed (the convicted, inexperienced armorer) had a friend, Troy Teske, deliver some rounds he found to the police that might have bearing on the case. I believe these were delivered BEFORE Guiterrez was convicted.
The cops took the evidence and saw that the rounds (allegedly) had no resemblance to the the rounds on the set of "Rust" and filed them away, IN A DIFFERENT FOLDER. The defense was never made aware of this.
It's not for the prosecution to decide this. The defense must have access to ALL evidence, relevant or not - and they weren't. Hence, the Brady violation and dismissal of charges. Were the rounds relevant? Probably not, but that's not the point.
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I watched another attorney yesterday (Andrew Branch) who disagrees. The case should NOT have been thrown out because the "evidence" has no bearing on what Baldwin was accused of.
He fired a loaded weapon and killed Haylana Hutchins. That's all that needs to be said. How the bullet got onto the set is irrelevant to the charge.
I read that Gutierrez's attorney is filing motions to have her case dismisses on similar grounds.
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Good luck with this...
Alec Baldwin Plans to Sue Santa Fe Prosecutor, Sheriff
Alec Baldwin’s lawyers have warned the Santa Fe sheriff and prosecutors of “future litigation” over their actions in the Rust shooting trial following the dismissal of the charge against the actor.
In a pair of preservation notices mailed Monday and obtained by Rolling Stone, Baldwin’s lawyers told both the Santa Fe prosecutor Kari Morrissey and Sheriff Adan Mendoza to “preserve all relevant information in your possession, custody, and/or control” related to the trial against Baldwin.“Specifically, we request that you immediately take all necessary steps, including preserving all devices, hard drives, emails, text messages, and other electronic communications, to preserve any and all documents, records, electronically stored information (‘ESI’), and other materials and data existing in any form whatsoever, that are actually or potentially relevant or relate in any way to the investigation(s) and/or prosecution(s) conducted by the State in connection with the death of Halyna Hutchins on the set of the movie, Rust,” the preservation notices stated.
Last week, the judge in the Baldwin trial dismissed the single felony count of involuntary manslaughter against the actor after Baldwin’s lawyers filed an emergency motion alleging prosecutors and investigators withheld evidence. The case was dismissed with prejudice, meaning that prosecutors could not re-file the charge against Baldwin.
“There is no way for the court to right this wrong,” New Mexico Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer said in the July 12 ruling to dismiss.
On the trial’s stunning final day, the prosecution was accused of withholding evidence about how a batch of .45 caliber live ammunition belonging to famed Hollywood armorer Thell Reed, the father of Rust’s rookie armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, had been collected and booked by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office last March. The evidence was not supplied to Baldwin’s defense either physically or through a supplemental evidence report.In delivering her admittedly “extreme” ruling, Judge Marlowe Sommer said the live ammunition — surrendered by a friend of Thell Reed — could have helped Baldwin undermine prosecutors’ theory of the case and shore up his defense claim that the fatal shooting was unforeseeable. Judge Sommer said prosecutors “unilaterally withheld” the evidence and that it was both “material” and “favorable” to Baldwin’s defense, the two thresholds necessary for her ruling.
“The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office and the prosecution failed to disclose the supplemental [evidence] report to the defense and provide the defense an opportunity to inspect the rounds collected into evidence,” Marlowe Sommer said. “The suppressed evidence is favorable to the accused. It is impeachment evidence (and) is potentially exculpatory to the defense.”
Due to the actions of the Santa Fe sheriff and prosecutor, who filed charges against Baldwin despite having knowledge of the “suppressed evidence,” the actor’s lawyers are now planning to sue both parties.
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I wonder if they can file new charges for criminal negligence not based on him pulling the trigger, but based on the lack of proper oversight?
@LuFins-Dad said in The Alec Baldwin Trial:
I wonder if they can file new charges for criminal negligence not based on him pulling the trigger, but based on the lack of proper oversight?
I suspect his role as producer is more of a civil liability than criminal.
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I don’t know… Especially if the lawyers do proceed to press a suit against the prosecutor. I could see them filing a new set of criminal negligence. If criminal negligence leads to a death, it is a class 5 felony and sentencing is exactly the same as involuntary manslaughter.
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Matthew Hutchins (widower of the woman Baldwin killed) has notified, through counsel, that he is preparing to sue Baldwin for wrongful death.
After his wife was killed by Baldwin, he entered into a settlement in which Baldwin agreed to pay her estate an undisclosed amount of money, and would also pay their son an undisclosed amount from the ages of 18-22.
No payments have been made. From what I gather, he's at least 6 months in arrears, and Hutchins is saying that he's going to pursue civil action because of non-payment.
My opinion? Sue him, and his company, into oblivion.
