At 8 a.m., when the temperature was already above 70 degrees Fahrenheit, Alec Baldwin, accompanied by his wife Hilaria and his group of lawyers in boots and suits, arrived at the courthouse in Santa Fe.
Who knows what the strategy is, but Hilaria has made a habit of walking into the courthouse separately from her husband. She walks briskly across the courthouse, dressed in her yoga queen style and with her shiny hair blowing in the wind, ignoring all questions from reporters.
Alec Baldwin arrived at the courthouse in New Mexico with his wife Hilaria and a group of attorneys
Baldwin tried to hide his face as he was shown footage of the incident in which Halyna Hutchins was shot, while his wife watched along with the rest of the court on an overhead screen
Baldwin is still handicapped by a recent hip operation, but his progress is slower and slower. Heavy-minded and with a stiff gait, he looks like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. And rightly so.
Baldwin is charged with involuntary manslaughter in connection with the October 2021 death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on his film Rust.
On the set of the Bonanza Creek movie ranch 20 miles south of Santa Fe, he pointed a gun at Hutchins during a rehearsal at a church when it went off, killing her and wounding director Joel Souza. Baldwin has pleaded not guilty to the charge.
Doctors try to save Hutchins, a Ukrainian cameraman who was shot dead on the set of Rust
In his honor, the usual circus had gathered outside the courthouse, with 41 news organizations from around the world authorized to report on the event.
Gloria Allred, 83, the well-known attorney representing the victim’s family, gave interviews in their midst. Allred held up a photo of Hutchins in a silent accusation, explaining that her family could not travel from their native Ukraine because of the war.
She is representing them in a civil lawsuit they have filed against Mr. Baldwin, and has expressed her displeasure with his upcoming reality show, The Baldwins. “This is not a reality show!” she exclaimed, adding that it would be “sick” if he included any of the trial footage in his new series. To be fair, there is absolutely no evidence that this is his intention.
In court, we quickly began opening statements on the first day of the 66-year-old actor’s trial.
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, Rust’s young gunmaster responsible for gun safety on set, is already in jail after being charged with the same offense.
Not only did Baldwin have the support of his wife Hilaria in court, but his brother Stephen, who was an actor, was also present
She is currently appealing her sentence, but the prosecution immediately blamed her for her lack of security checks and weapons protocols.
“Every time he handled this weapon, he failed to perform a safety check on this inexperienced gunsmith. The reason he failed to do so was because he did not want to offend her,” prosecutor Erlinda Ocampo Johnson alleged.
“He violated basic gun safety rules.”
For the defense, Alex Spiro said: “This was an unspeakable tragedy, but Alec Baldwin committed no crime.
He was an actor,’ Spiro countered that the old adage that you should never point a gun at someone unless you intend to shoot him doesn’t apply here.
Witnesses said that seconds after she was shot, Ms. Hutchins shouted to a boom operator, “That wasn’t good. That wasn’t good at all,” according to a Los Angeles Times report based on interviews with 14 crew members.
“These are not the main rules on a film set. In films, we see people pointing guns at each other all the time.”
Then he launched into a lame joke about how movies should really look.
“The stuntman has to jump. The snake has to hiss,” he babbled before the prosecutor objected and he continued, asking the jury to distinguish between Alec Baldwin the actor and Alec Baldwin the person.
The jury was shown footage of the cast and crew rehearsing the fateful scene, featuring Alec Baldwin in costume as outlaw Harland Rust, complete with Stetson and villainous beard, repeatedly pulling the gun from his shoulder holster.
At the defense table, Alec Baldwin, the person, watched this with his hand over his mouth. A few rows behind him, his wife Hilaria, forward in her chair, chin resting in her hands, watching eagerly.
From my seat in the courtroom press box, it seemed clear that Baldwin’s finger was on the trigger. In the past, Baldwin has denied pulling the trigger, a crucial but controversial factor in his case.
Gunsmith Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the film-set gun dealer who loaded a gun for actor Alec Baldwin before it went off and killed a cameraman, was sentenced to 18 months in prison in April
“The evidence you’re going to hear is that it’s not possible, the gun is not going to go off without pulling the trigger,” Johnson said for the prosecution. “Even if he did,” Spiro said for the defense, “that would just make his statement false. It doesn’t make him guilty of murder.” As the morning session drew to a close, there was a reminder of the tragedy at the heart of this case.
We were shown disturbing footage of emergency workers with cameras on their lapels shooting the 42-year-old Hutchins fighting for her life on the dirt floor of the Bonanza Creek set. “Halyna, Halyna, deep breaths, deep breaths,” a voice calls out. “Good, good,” says another. “Jesus Christ,” someone shouts as a doctor enters with an oxygen tank.
The panic is palpable as the stricken woman is carried into a helicopter and then flown to hospital, where doctors are unable to save her.
In the courtroom, Alec Baldwin watched impassively, scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad. Behind him, his wife, the mother of his seven young children, looked tense and exhausted.
