The trial of American actor Alec Baldwin for the shooting that killed the director of photography for the western “Rust”, Halyna Hutchins, got to the heart of the matter on Wednesday, with the prosecution accusing him of having “violated fundamental rules” of safety.
The 66-year-old actor, who is being prosecuted for involuntary manslaughter, faces up to 18 months in prison.
At a ranch in New Mexico where filming was taking place in October 2021, the star brandished a gun that was supposed to only contain blanks but which fired a real projectile, killing the director of photography and injuring the director, Joel Souza.
In court in Santa Fe, the state capital, prosecutor Erlinda Ocampo Johnson on Wednesday portrayed the defendant as a capricious star who neglected basic gun safety rules.
The actor played “pretend with a real gun and violated basic gun safety rules,” she told the jury.
Alec Baldwin, dressed in a dark suit and tie, attended the hearing with his wife Hilaria and one of his brothers, Stephen, also an actor.
His lawyer Alex Spiro is expected to argue that his client is himself a victim in this case and that it was not his responsibility to check whether the weapon was loaded.
The confrontation between the two parties promises to be lively because the trial is based on an investigation marked by numerous weaknesses and twists and turns.
The actor has always explained that he was assured that the weapon was harmless and denies having pulled the trigger. His lawyers have filed numerous appeals to try to drop the charges, to no avail.
Their tenacity sowed doubt in the ranks of the prosecution for many months. They first obtained a change of prosecutor, then a dropping of the charges in 2023, before the actor was finally charged again in January.
For the defense, Mr. Baldwin is a Hollywood star on whom prosecutors are trying to make a name for themselves, in a case followed by the world’s media.
The investigation never established how live ammunition – which is in principle prohibited – ended up on the plateau.
Impact on the film industry
The prosecution plans to paint the portrait of an unbearable actor, whose diva-like behavior and disregard for basic safety rules put the entire film crew in danger.
The prosecution also believes that the actor “lied shamelessly” by changing his version of events after his first interrogation. It considers the hypothesis of an accidental shot, at the heart of its line of defense, “absurd.”
An expert report by the American federal police, the FBI, concluded that the pistol could not have fired without the trigger being pressed.
But the defense disputes this because the federal police damaged parts of the weapon while conducting tests to explore the possibility of an accidental shot. The star’s lawyers had even made this a central argument in an attempt to have the trial dismissed.
The death of Halyna Hutchins, a talented 42-year-old cinematographer from Ukraine who had worked on investigative documentaries, has deeply shocked the film industry.
“Rust” gunsmith Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who placed the bullet in the reproduction of the period pistol used by Mr Baldwin, was sentenced to 18 months in prison in April after a widely watched trial in the United States.
The fate of Alec Baldwin will also be closely scrutinized: his conviction would set a precedent that could dissuade other actors from using real weapons in filming.
The hearings are expected to last until July 19, before jurors deliberate.