Alec's lawyer says:
“This decision distorts Halyna Hutchins’s tragic death and represents a terrible miscarriage of justice. Mr. Baldwin had no reason to believe there was a live bullet in the gun — or anywhere on the movie set. He relied on the professionals with whom he worked, who assured him the gun did not have live rounds. We will fight these charges, and we will win.”
In Baldwin's civil lawsuit against the others, he claimed (correctly in my view):
“This tragedy happened because live bullets were delivered to the set and loaded into the gun,” the lawsuit said. It accused Ms. Gutierrez-Reed of failing to check the bullets or the gun carefully; Mr. Halls of failing to check the gun carefully before announcing it was safe and handing it to Mr. Baldwin; and Ms. Zachry of breaching her duty as props master by failing to ensure the safety of the weapons and ammunition on the set.
It's also questionable whether Guitierrez-Reed was qualified for the job as armorer. Her father was a famous armorer and she hung around sets with him. This was only her second job as armorer:
Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, who had been learning how to be an armorer from her father, Thell Reed, a Hollywood weapons expert, was just getting started as a head armorer herself. In a recent podcast, she noted that she had just finished filming her first movie as head armorer, a western called “The Old Way” starring Nicolas Cage, and confided that “I almost didn’t take the job because I wasn’t sure if I was ready.”
Stu Brumbaugh, a key grip on “The Old Way,” said in an interview that he had recommended Ms. Gutierrez-Reed be fired after he witnessed two unannounced discharges of weapons she was holding, startling others and in one case prompting an angry reaction from Mr. Cage. She was kept on, he said, which he saw as evidence of a broader problem in which producers try to cut costs by hiring less experienced crews. The incident was reported earlier by CNN.
I don't think her lawyer helped her with this statement:
A lawyer for Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, 25, who trained on film sets with her father, a veteran Hollywood armorer named Thell Reed, had previously said she filled two roles on the “Rust” set — as armorer and props assistant — which made it difficult for her to focus fully on her job as armorer.
There are two versions of involuntary manslaughter in New Mexico. One carries a maximum sentence of 18 months. The other, also has an 18 month cap, but includes a mandatory five year sentence as a firearm enhancement, and applies to cases involving more than simple negligence. Alec Baldwin and Hannah Gutierrez-Reed have been charged with both, in the alternative, meaning the jury will decide which version applies to each.
