NM Medical examiner weighs in on Baldwin shooting

| August 16, 2022

In what “Baldwin’s legal team suggested it was further proof that the shooting was “a tragic accident” and that he should not face criminal charges. ” the NM Medical Examiner’s Office has officially ruled that the ‘Rust’ death was an accident.

“This is the third time the New Mexico authorities have found that Alec Baldwin had no authority or knowledge of the allegedly unsafe conditions on the set, that he was told by the person in charge of safety on the set that the gun was ‘cold’ and believed the gun was safe,” attorney Luke Nikas said in a statement.

Baldwin said in a December interview with ABC News that he was pointing the gun at Hutchins at her instruction on the set of the Western film “Rust” when it went off after he cocked it. He said he did not pull the trigger.

CBS News

Seems to me they are going to have a problem resolving that with the FBI report which said Baldwin pulled the trigger. Not checking the gun himself? Unforegiveable. It should be noted that other sources said there was no part of the schedule for the day requiring him to cock the gun.

Actually, I don’t have a problem with the ME’s conclusions, but rather with the lawyer. I don’t think Baldwin intentionally killed her: but I think this is a textbook case of negligent, unintentional homicide, aka manslaughter, and he should get time in the Greybar Hotel accordingly. That he is a hypocritical leftist pseudo-thug brat… well, that’s just a little schadenfreude.

 

Category: Crime, Dick Stepping, Guns

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26Limabeans

He needs to be a convicted felon and thus barred from
possessing firearms, real or not.

Anonymous

Just on general principles of safety, he shouldn’t have a Slinky.

SFC D

He’ll shoot your eye out, kid!

Deckie

Or balloons. Krusty’s Clown College says if you get a bad one it will go off and take the eyes out of everyone in the room!

Krusty: “What’ll THAT cost ya?!?!…. Hey, Bill… what’d that cost us..?”

Docduracoat

Everyone is forgetting that Baldwin gave an interview to Rolling Stone magazine where he made several very damaging admissions.

He stated in print that he is knowledgeable about firearms and knows the differences between dummy rounds, blanks, and live rounds.
He also said that he has been to the range with expert shooters and has experience shooting handguns and machine guns.
He further stated, in print, that he did not check the gun himself, even though he was fully qualified to do so, because he did not want to embarrass the new young armorer on the set.
That will certainly inflame the jury that a mother is dead because he did not want to embarrass a new employee.

Everyone needs to remember that local district attorneys have complete immunity on their charging decisions.
They are permitted to use political reasons, like the state wants to attract movie companies into their state, when they decide whether or not to charge Alec Baldwin and what charge (if any) to apply.

KoB

I repeat, ad nauseum, what I said in the beginning of this. He will walk. A Civil Suit against him/his production company will have the prop master thrown under the bus.

SFC D

She’s got a spot right there next to Alec. A whole chain of negligent dumbasses.

AW1Ed

Tragic of course, but still negligence resulting in both a death and maiming.

If charged criminally he’ll get his day in court plea deal. The civil suits are entirely different.

Last edited 1 year ago by AW1Ed
SFC D

They were blocking out the scene, could’ve just as easily been done by Baldwin pointing at the camera. The gun wasn’t even needed. Of course, that might’ve just delayed the trigger pull. Blame still rests on Baldwin.

Hack Stone

Blame still rests on Baldwin the Producer, not Baldwin the actor. We all know that actors are for the most part pompous asses who love the smell of their own farts, so he can plead ignorance.

As to (see what Hack did there?) Baldwin the Producer, it was he and his production company that vetted and hired the prop master(s), armorer, caterer and safety supervisor (insert laughing emoji here).

To put a positive spin on the tragedy, at least the armorer can list this film as prior experience on her resume.

KoB

Yep to all, Hack Stone. And he is steadily pushing the blame on everyone but himself. I stand by previous comment. He’ll walk. He still hasn’t provided the phone records that were requested in December.

I’m sure most of y’all have seen this, but I’ll stick it right here, just in case.

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/alec-baldwin-rust-shooting-every-single-person-set-blame-halyna-hutchins-death

26Limabeans

“The man who is the principal safety officer of the set of the film declared the gun was safe when he handed it to me,”

So his defense will include that he did not “pick up” the weapon but rather it was “handed” to him.
Pretty weak sauce.

Berliner

Trust but verify. British soldiers in Berlin, when turning in their weapons to the arms room, had the barrel put to their chest while the armorer pulled the trigger.

Martinjmpr

No, the defense will be that he believed that the gun was safe when it was handed to him and that this belief was a reasonable one.

Whether he “picked up” the gun or it “was handed” to him is not relevant, what is relevant is whether he genuinely believed the gun was not in a condition to fire a bullet at the time he pulled the trigger.

SFC D

Yup. He’s writing the check, he carries the responsibility. Even if it was someone else that pulled the trigger (allegedly).

Hack Stone

As the Producer, he hired everyone on that set. The responsibility rests on his shoulders. He should focus all of his efforts on hiding his assets by putting them in his wife’s name. Maybe he can take some tips from the late Honorary Chief Petty Officer, he was well versed in trying (unsuccessfully) to hide his assets from judgment.

Anonymous

Hey, as a loyal donating left/libtard, he ain’t responsible for sh*t!

poetrooper

Poe’s past experience with the New Mexico Medical Examiner’s office doesn’t incline him to lend much credence to their rulings. When a middle-aged niece who’d been a druggie since high school (and was a drug counselor for the state health department at the time of her death) overdosed, the police report noted that she had six open bottles of psychoactive drugs on the bed with pills from all of them scattered over and around her body. She also clearly exhibited early signs of meth-mouth.

The New Mexico Medical Examiner ruled her death a heart attack…

5JC

Enough meth will give anyone a heart attack.

poetrooper

The funeral home director said the New Mexico Medical Examiner’s office was notorious for issuing rulings on drug deaths that helped keep state drug death statistics lower. At that time, New Mexico was one of the highest in the country for lethal overdoses on prescription drugs.

It was also a bit of a public embarrassment that she was a drug counselor for the state.

Martinjmpr

Seems to me that any criminal culpability should fall on the safety officer or prop manager.

Actors are trained monkeys who pretend to operate various pieces of equipment, be they vehicles, firearms, aircraft or typewriters. In this context, it’s not realistic to expect a mere actor to know the “rules of firearm safety” because what he was handling was a stage prop, not a firearm.

Take the firearm aspect out of it for a second: Suppose the on-set death had been caused by an out-of-control automobile that had a brake failure because nobody checked the brakes. Would we say “the driver is at fault because he should have checked the brakes?” Not likely. The person responsible was the person who had the responsibility to check the brakes.

I don’t like Baldwin either but I don’t see any criminal culpability on his part.

SFC D

A “stage prop” wouldn’t be able to chamber a live round, let alone fire. This was a firearm, negligently handled by everyone who touched it. The first link in this chain of dumbassery was having live rounds on the set. Never, ever, have live rounds and blanks together on a training range, movie set, anywhere. And, as the producer of this movie, Alec gets the blame for that too.

rgr769

The difference between live rounds and blanks is readily apparent. So, the two cannot be confused. Blanks do not have a lead bullet seated in the cartridge case. Blanks have a paper card sealed into the case mouth, or alternatively, they have the case mouth crimped shut. Also, I have used .45 caliber blanks that have black plastic case walls with a brass case head. The problem on this set was that there were dummy rounds used for close up shots of the SAA revolvers, so that the viewing audience would see that the actor/character was wielding a “loaded” revolver, with the bullets visible from the front of the cylinder.

Dummy rounds are normally created by loading a bullet in an empty case which was previously fired or one with no primer. Some dummies are further indicated by drilling holes in the case wall. Such feature, or merely using unprimed cases for dummy rounds, make it apparent that the dummy is not a live round.

rgr769

Why live rounds could be mixed in with dummy rounds is the 64-dollar question. This death was not the result of someone confusing blanks with dummy rounds when loading the subject single action revolver. Also, the person loading that cylinder chamber had to have seen that the cartridge loaded had a live primer in the case’s primer pocket.

Anonymous

Dumbassery.

SFC D

Concur completely, except people can and do confuse the two. There’s a reason Army range policies do not allow blanks and live ammo on the range at the same time. They shouldn’t be confused, but it’s best to remove the possibility completely. It’s a movie set, you’re dealing with people who have zero knowledge of firearms or firearms safety. They don’t know what we know.

rgr769

Well, that is why it is verboten to have live ammo on any movie set or on a stage.

Martinjmpr

A “stage prop” wouldn’t be able to chamber a live round, let alone fire. 

Do you know that for a fact or are you making an assumption?  😉 

Like many people here at TAH, I know a LOT about actual firearms, but I’ll admit to knowing absolutely NOTHING about Hollywood stage props or stage guns. For all I know they CAN chamber and fire rounds – I simply don’t know and can’t make the assumption.

SFC D

If it’s an actual, live, working firearm, It’s not a “prop”. It’s an actual, live, working firearm. I think that’s a very safe assumption. Much like a starter pistol. It can fire a blank, cannot chamber a live round, and the barrel is solid, cannot pass a projectile. You may disagree. Either way, you may now climb down out of my ass.

rgr769

You are both mistaken. Calling the subject weapon a “prop” does not make it not a real firearm capable of firing live ammo. It is only referred to as a prop gun because it is being used as a prop in a theatrical activity. There are specifically designed prop guns that cannot fire live ammo. But they don’t look like the real thing in close-ups and are likely more expensive than an Italian made copy of a Colt SAA.

One of my beefs with the movie industry is that in Civil War era flicks, the prop guys supply copies of the Colt percussion revolvers with brass frames. Colt never made such guns.

rgr769

The movie prop guys buy and supply these guns that never were because they are about $75 cheaper that the accurate replicas with steel frames.

rgr769

Actual real firearms are regularly used on movie sets for the simple reason that they need to look real in closeups. I often see foreign movies and TV shows where I can tell the firearms are not real. Dummy guns are used for long shots.

I have been in a couple of stage plays and two movies as a Civil War reenactor. For authenticity real firearms are used to shoot blanks. Every Western since the Great Train Robbery has used real firearms shooting blanks. In fact, Hollywierd long ago developed a special blank that can fire in revolvers that are 38-40, 44-40, 44 Special, and .45 Colt. Thus, the same blank cartridge could be used in all the period cowboy rifles and pistols. Blanks are perfectly safe so long as they are not fired into someone’s face at ten feet or less.

rgr769

You have to remember that a “prop” is any object used as a prop. Weapons may be made out of rubber or steel. Original real swords that are deadly are used in movies all the time; but they are still considered “props.”

Any object used on the set is a “prop” and is within the ambit of the propmaster; except weapons, fake or real, are usually maintained and provided by the armorer.

This Pietta Single Action Army was like any one you could buy in a gun store. But it was used as a prop. It was supposed to be loaded with dummy rounds, but somehow one or more live rounds were loaded in the cylinder.

Hate_me

Fairly certain that “prop” is simply short for “property” and doesn’t designate any unique function or purpose for the firearm – only that it is the property of the production and not a personally-owned weapon.

Actors are not excused from standard gun safety practices, and there are very specific protocols in place for film crews that exceed the standard of any casual shooter: protocols like shining a light down the barrel to ensure there are no squibs, and offering everyone on set the chance to inspect any weapon/ammo when handed to its end user.

jeff LPH 3 63-66

He meets all the Left reasons to walk
1- demoRat
2- liberal
3- hollyweird actor.

Prior Service

That’s only one reason, just spelled three different ways

Martinjmpr

What I’m still wondering was: Why was there live ammo anywhere on the set? That was a failure of leadership and control right there. IF there were scenes that required live ammo to be used, then those scenes should have been shot separately and as soon as those scenes were filmed, all live ammo should have been recovered and stored by the armorer or prop manager, period.

I had thought that Hollywood had a rule (for decades now) that no actor handles a weapon, real or not, without an armorer checking that weapon first. So it’s a question of whether the Rust set had no such rules, or it had the rules in place but they were simply not followed or enforced.

If it was the latter, then I have to admit I’m fuzzy as to who is the actual HMFIC of a movie set. Is it the producer or the director or someone else? I realize that like most of us here I have a military mindset so I assume there is always somebody who has to be the Captain Kirk of this enterprise.

Graybeard

As I recall, several of the folks on the set crew had been out plinking with that firearm earlier – hence the live ammo in the vicinity of the firearm.
Further, the original armorer (and possibly another) had walked off because of the atmosphere on the set (i.e. Baldwin’s farts whenever he opened his mouth) and the poor person who ended up as armorer was neither trained nor qualified to serve as one.
Dunno what kind of mileage the defense is going to get out of “the gun just went off” when the report demonstrated that the hammer would fall when and only when the trigger was pulled. It is not possible for a mechanical failure to be the cause of the ND, only an actual trigger pull.

Will Alec Baldwin walk? Most probably. Too much adz-kissing going on in the political realm when big names are involved. But his hubris should still be pointed out and mocked repeatedly and often until he dies.

Martinjmpr

As I recall, several of the folks on the set crew had been out plinking with that firearm earlier – hence the live ammo in the vicinity of the firearm.

If that was true, then it reveals a level of unprofessionalism, indiscipline and carelessness that is pretty astonishing in this day and age. After Jon-Erik Hexum and Brandon Lee (as well as other lesser known gun fatalities on Hollywood sets), the industry established a protocol for handling firearms on-set that applied a lot of basic, common-sense rules (like no mixing of blanks with live rounds, always having an armorer check a firearm before handing it to an actor, etc.)

CIVIL liability is likely going to land on Baldwin and his company, since they have the deep pockets and are ultimately responsible.

But the question of CRIMINAL culpability is going to depend on what the New Mexico criminal negligence statute says. I’m not sure what the elements of the crime are or even whether it’s a misdemeanor or felony.

rgr769

You are correct in that there is no reason live ammo should be on a movie set, except in the rare circumstance where they want to shoot a scene where actual bullets are seen striking something. Frequently, that is done using explosive squibs in most cases, rather than firing live ammo at some prop.

Negligent Homicide is usually a felony. But I agree with Poe that he will never be charged with a crime.

Mixing live rounds with blanks should not happen, but, as I previously indicated, a blank could never be confused with a live round. Blanks don’t have a seated bullet. The problem is having dummy cartridges in proximity with live cartridges. But whoever last loaded the subject pistol is the one at fault.

Skivvy Stacker

Now the defense team is saying that he didn’t pull the trigger, but that the gun was “broken”.
So, I guess the hammer pulled itself back, got tired of waiting for rehearsal to end, and fell on the bullet casing, which startled the bullet casing, causing the bullet to jump out and run into the woman who was standing in front of it.

rgr769

The FBI technical firearms people examined the subject gun. They found that it had no defects or broken parts. Thus, it could only fire if the trigger was pulled with the hammer in full-cock or if the trigger was held depressed with the hammer released from the full cock position. There is no evidence the pistol was “broken.”

SFC D

I read somewhere that the pistol broke during testing. I’m gonna guess they broke the hammer dry-firing. I’m admitting nothing as to why I suspect that.

rgr769

One cannot break the hammer on a single action pistol just dry firing it. We had a sixteen-year-old cowboy shooter in my club who dry-fired his pistols for over an hour every night to work on his gun handling. He wore out a couple of Rugers after a year or two, but he never broke anything.

The only parts on an SAA commonly subject to breakage are springs. The only way they could break a hammer is to hit is with a sledgehammer. Now they could apply severe force to the hammer to see how much force is takes to break the trigger sear, but I fail to see why they would do that. Baldwin didn’t drop the gun on its hammer.

SFC D

One would think the medical examiner’s purview would be limited to what the bullet did after entering the victim’s body, not the mechanics of the shooting.

rgr769

The medical examiner determines whether she was killed by the action of another–death by homicide. He has apparently decided this homicide was the result of an accident. Homicide can be non-criminal.

Hack Stone

You got that right, rgr769. A lot of arm chair prosecutors love to jump on Facebook when a coroner rules the death of a fine upstanding yute a homicide, because they are too dense that homicide just mean that death was caused by another person. Homicide does not always equal murder. Homicide is a medical determination, murder is a legal determination.

FuzeVT

I can believe that he thought it was cold but also have no doubt that he pulled the trigger, because that’s how guns work and stuff.
I’m curious, though, how the medical examiner’s office can tell whether a gun’s trigger works properly – at least better than the FBI. I’m pretty sure their purview extends to “did a bullet rip through the woman or not”.

Last edited 1 year ago by FuzeVT
Old tanker

That weapon required 2 specific actions to fire. Cocking the hammer and pulling the trigger. Of course there is another action which is pointing it in the direction of something he was not supposed to shoot, people.

At best, the least he should face is charges for negligent homicide and negligent assault.

Martinjmpr

Just for fun (and because I’m weird like that) I decided to actually look up the New Mexico statutes that might apply. I can see 30-2-3. Manslaughter. Involuntary manslaugher defined as ” B. Involuntary manslaughter consists of manslaughter committed in the commission of an unlawful act not amounting to felony, or in the commission of a lawful act which might produce death in an unlawful manner or without due caution and circumspection.” 4th degree felony;
and 30-7-4 (a) (3). Negligent use of a deadly weapon, defined as ” (3)      endangering the safety of another by handling or using a firearm or other deadly weapon in a negligent manner;” which is a misdemeanor.
Interestingly, I couldn’t find a general “negligent homicide” statute but I may have missed it.

Again I think this will hinge on whether Baldwin knew (or should have known) he was handling an actual firearm vs a stage prop.

rgr769

He knew what it was. Even he is not that stupid.

rgr769

The gun was supposed to be loaded with dummy rounds so that the bullets in the chambers could be seen by the camera in the close up shot they were blocking. That is why the gun was pointed toward the camera lens when it fired. If it was supposed to be loaded with blanks, it would have called a “hot gun.”

Martinjmpr

One question I have never seen answered (unless it’s buried somewhere in something that’s never been published) is: What was the firearm in question? It seems to me it must have been one of the 3 things: 1. An actual firearm, in which case I would like to know the make, model and caliber; 2. An actual firearm which had been modified for use on a movie set, in which case I would want to know all of the above PLUS how it was modified and who it was modified by; or 3. A non-firearm stage prop, in which case I would want to know the make and model and any other technical specifications of the firearm.

It may seem like a quibble but IMO it’s critical to know exactly what the firearm WAS because otherwise we are all making assumptions.

SFC D

Be careful about that “prop gun” statement.

rgr769

The gun in question is a .45 caliber Italian made reproduction of an 1873 Colt Single Action Army. It is a real firearm. It was not modified for use on a movie set. I have several of them by different manufacturers, and I have used two of them to shoot blanks in Indian Wars reenactments. I am not making assumptions, as I have scrutinized the photos of the gun in question, as well as several others on the movie set.

Martinjmpr

I really think there is just too much ‘gray area’ here to charge anybody with a crime. So much is going to rest on what Baldwin knew or should have known.

Not every bad thing is a crime and even if a crime of negligence was committed here it’s going to be very difficult to prove.

Hack Stone

Looks like those in charge of the investigation are intentionally screwing up so if anyone does get charged, it will be thrown out in court.

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/rust-armorer-hannah-gutierrez-reed-dna-fingerprints-1235345267/#article-comments

Hack Stone