Couldn't find the old thread ... But it looks like Baldwin will be charged with manslaughter for the Rust set death. Alec Baldwin to be charged in fatal 'Rust' shooting: Live updates
Not sure about the legal terms here, but he was certainly negligent and that caused a person to die. If the story as written is true.
Involuntary manslaughter seems entirely appropriate, if not obvious. I view this similar to police shootings, if you do a bad shoot you don’t get to just say “oops, my bad”. If incompetence is at play, there should be a form of criminal negligence. That obviously doesn’t mean every death or accident becomes criminal, but where clear negligence can be shown… It may seem more obvious for the armorer to be responsible than Baldwin, but if he put an incompetent person in charge then you could argue he is the more responsible party.
I think what came out is the armorer was pretty much incompetent or hired due to nepotism, and as producer Baldwin “should have known” that. Whether they can convict him pretty much depends on if they can prove he knew there were issues with the armorer. I’m guessing to charge him, they found some stuff like complaints/emails about her incompetence.
I think it's a combination of the him being a producer, and there already have been a number of complaints and "misfires" (to the point that few crew members left the set out of fear for their safety), him being a producer who should have had more control of the set, and him being the one who pulled the trigger. I suspected he'd get charged with something equivalent to 'negligence resulting in death', not sure if involuntary manslaughter is the same as that ... I still believe the person actually responsible for the death is the person who brought a live round to the movie set, and I suspect that's the armorer ...
I still don’t understand why live rounds are even allowed on any set given this isn’t the first time this happens.
No actual projectile in the brass. Here's an example. It's pretty easy to tell by visual inspection, but you have to eject the round to know for sure.
Colin Miller does what one should really do if the issue is the validity of the decision to charge. He looked at the NM statute and the case law for the elements of the crime. Thread
One complication here is that for movies, for the sake of realism on close ups, they use real bullets that have been altered to be inert. I remember reading this from the old thread, but the armorer is supposed to take a real bullet, remove the bullet, remove the gun powder, press the bullet back in place, and then drill a hole in the side to mark it as an inert round. I suspect what happened here is the armorer either missed a bullet when she was dummying them up, or somehow mixed real and dummy bullets... and that's how a real bullet got brought to the set. There is supposed to be a person the set who inspects the gun and checks there are holes drilled in the casings of all the bullets before each close up scene. This was obviously not done. It was a complete failure of gun protocol on the set.
Yeah I'm not sure how you hold an actor responsible for that. Producer? Sure. Unfortunately for Baldwin, he's both.
Here is a quote from an old NYT story on it. They apparently opened the gun before the police arrived, and realized one of the bullets in the gun didn't have the drilled hole... "After the shooting, Mr. Halls said, he picked up the gun from a pew inside the church and took it to Ms. Gutierrez-Reed. When she opened it, he said, according to the affidavit, he could see “at least four dummy casings with the holes on the side, and one without the hole. He advised this did not have the cap on it and was just the casing.” Dummy rounds are sometimes identified by a pierced hole on the side."