Alec Baldwin Gets Away with Murder?

Alec Baldwin’s case was dismissed with prejudice.

What does this mean, IANAL view point

Alec Baldwin was charged with involuntary manslaughter after he shot and killed his cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins.

The relevant facts: Alec Baldwin was holding a real gun. Alec Baldwin pointed the gun at a person. Alec Baldwin cocked the gun (pulled the hammer back and set it on the sear). Alec Baldwin then pressed the trigger, causing the gun to fire, killing Halyna Hutchins.

Irrelevant facts: Somebody told Alec Baldwin that the gun was unloaded (Treat every gun as if it is loaded). Somebody said they loaded dummy rounds into the gun (Treat every gun as if it is loaded). He says he did not pull the trigger, (Never point your gun at something you are not willing to destroy/kill.). In addition, he injured the director(?) (Be sure of your target and what is beyond it).

Other irrelevant facts: Baldwin is just a trained monkey. He can’t be expected to know the safety rules. Baldwin is so stupid that he should never have been handed a real gun. It was somebody else’s responsibility to make sure that the gun was “safe”.

Things went wrong on that set. Some of it appears to be Baldwin’s responsibility. Including rushing the safety crew, disregarding safety “suggestions” and overall shitty safety.

It appears that the guns used in the movie were also used for life fire on the set or near the set. In, and of, itself, this is not a real issue. It is no different from the fact that live rounds were fired from the pistol before it arrived on set for the first day.

Still irrelevant, the second(?) assistant director took the gun from the armor and announced it was “safe”.

Dummy rounds on a movie set should be easy to distinguish from live rounds.

Blanks have a crimped front and are visibly different. Dummy rounds should have no primers or rubber (I use hot glue) in place of the primer. Dummy rounds should either have a hole drilled in the side, or have a BB in the case.

One standard method reasonable actors do, when handed a gun that is “safe” is to “fire” the gun 7 times, or more. When I first heard about the 7, it was “6 to make sure it is safe, and 1 for Brandon.” The “Brandon” referred to Brandon Lee, who died when he shot himself with a blank.

It is reported that other actors on the set were “firing” their guns into the ground 10 times, after they were told the gun was safe.

So why was the case dismissed?

There was a Brady challenge.

Brady Challenge

This is named after —Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), decided in 1963. The facts of the case were that the defendant and companion were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. At trial, the defendant admitted to participating in the crime, but not to the actual killing.

His lawyer threw him at the mercy of the court and asked that he be given life in prison instead of the death penalty. It didn’t happen.

In preparing for the case, the defendant’s lawyer requested the state allow him to examine the extrajudicial statements. The state showed the defendant several of these extrajudicial statements. The state withheld the statement where the companion admitted to doing the actual killing.

The defendant only found out about this admission after the trial, where he had been found guilty and sentenced to death.

The Maryland Court of Appeals held that the defendant was denied due process of law, and remanded the case for a new trial.

That new trial was just for the question of the sentence, not the guilt of the defendant.

The Supreme Court held that the defendant’s constitutional rights were not denied when the question was limited to just a question of sentence.

In addition, the Court held:

Translate:

What Was the Trial About?

Baldwin’s defense team is attempting to push the blame onto other people. This is his right.

The state has to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Baldwin is guilty. What they have to prove is documented in the Uniform Jury Instructions for the state of NM.

This was the proposed jury instructions by Baldwin’s lawyers. It is designed to confuse the jury. The state likely had a significantly shorter and more focused set of jury instructions.

This is what the state proposed:

The state’s proposed jury instructions are straight from the New Mexico guidelines. So let’s compare and contrast.

In the state’s version, there is no question of “purpose” or “volitional”. The defense is asking the jury to consider if Alexander shot the gun purposely and intentionally. That is not part of the count.

I have had one unintended discharge. I did not “purposefully” do it. I did not intend to do so. My Marlin was pointed down range as I was lowering the hammer. The hammer extension slipped out from under my thumb. Bang.

Lots of unhappiness on my part, not damage done.

The state asks the jury to consider if Alexander had “subjective knowledge” of the risks. This is the trained monkey question. As part of the defense position, they argued that Baldwin was just a trained monkey and wasn’t capable of understanding the risks of handling firearms.

This is the argument that many of the defenders of Alexander made. “He is too busy to learn how to handle a gun safely.” Here’s the thing, he had the time and ability to learn how to do “quick draws”, he should have made time to learn how to handle a gun.

This is also asking the jury to consider if Alexander has the capacity to understand that if something goes wrong while he’s pointing a gun at a person, that person can die.

Did Alexander act with willful disregard for the safety of others? Hell yes. We have testimony from another actor on set that personally instructed Alexander to stop pointing guns at people, including said actor.

The defense is still, “I’m too stupid to handle real guns.”

What this means, is that the defense needs to bring in evidence and testimony that suggests that Alexander believed that he was playing with a toy, and not a gun.

The Evidence In Question

After Alexander killed Halyna, the set became a crime scene. One of the things they were looking for was live rounds.

If the armor had kept control of the armory, this would not have happened. The issue is that live rounds got into the armory that were physically indistinguishable from the dummy rounds.

I have a dummy round sitting where I can show it to people. The number of times I’ve picked it up, thinking it was a live round, only to hear and feel the rattle and know it was one of my dummy rounds is high.

The state was likely to argue that it didn’t make any difference. If Alexander had kept his bugger hook off the bang stick, nothing bad would have happened. The defense is going to argue that nobody could tell the dummy rounds from the real thing. So a trained monkey should be excused for treating a gun as a toy because he truly believed it was just a toy.

The investigators did find live rounds on set. Not just in the armory. They found live rounds in the pistol belts of at least two actors. This means that if the scene called for an actor to reload his pistol, he could very well have loaded a live round.

Halyna’s father is a well-known and well-respected armor. It is likely that Halyna got the job because of her father. One of her father’s friends brought a handful of live rounds to an Arizona(?) police station. He turned it in as being potentially of interest to the case against Halyna.

The evidence was booked into a case, but not the Baldwin case. The police contacted the prosecutor, she saw images of the rounds and determined they didn’t match anything they had.

When the defense introduced those rounds into evidence at trial, it was obvious that they did look like the live rounds that were found on set.

This led to the defense making the claim that the state had withheld evidence.

Did the Evidence meet the Brady Rule Requirements

The requirements are that the evidence was withheld, that the evidence was favorable to the defendant OR that it could be used to impeach a witness, and that the evidence be material.

Since Alexander is going with the “I’m just a trained monkey” defense, anything that would show that he is simply a trained monkey and wouldn’t have known is favorable to him.

The court decides questions of law, the jury decides questions of facts. Is the evidence material and favorable might be a question of fact. This puts the Judge in a quandary. What is she to do?

What did the state do?

When it became obvious that the judge was going to dismiss the case, with prejudice, the state, and the court, stepped up to create the strongest possible situation for the appeal.

Remember, the appeals court doesn’t hear new evidence. They have only the record of the inferior court, plus the arguments put forth by the parties.

To this end, the prosecutor was sworn in as a witness to give testimony. All the “evidence” that the state had about the Brady Challenge would be lost to the appeals process if it wasn’t in the record. Thus, they made sure everything made it into the record.

When the judge dismissed the case, she too made sure everything was on the record. She explained exactly why she did what she did.

Where Does this Go?

The state is highly likely to appeal this case. The appeals court will decide if it was appropriate to dismiss the case. If they find that it was not appropriate, they will vacate the inferior findings and remand the case to be heard again.

This case is likely to be remanded for a new trial. The appeals court is not restricted to questions of law. They can look at the evidence and decide it was not material, or they could decide that it is not favorable.

Either finding means that Alexander is back in court.

Notes:
I found it interesting that the defense jury instructions call him “Alec Baldwin”, which is the name he is known by in the movies. The state refers to him as “Alexander Rae Baldwin”. His formal name.

Using Alexander instead of Alec is a way of reducing that connection in the jury. This isn’t a man they know from the movies, this is just a man who is charged with manslaughter.

I think the judge was a bit of a chicken. I am not a lawyer, so this might be the best way to make sure that Alexander spends real time in a real jail.