Alec Baldwin Opens Up About ‘Rust’ Shooting Case, Legal Nightmare
On the latest episode of Fail Better, David Duchovny’s original podcast, Alec Baldwin opens up about the on-set shooting that derailed his career and led to him facing down a potential prison sentence as he went on trial for involuntary manslaughter, telling the host and fellow actor that new information that would have exonerated him would have been revealed in court had the case not been dismissed at the 11th hour.
The tragedy occurred on the New Mexico set of the Western indie film Rust on Oct. 21, 2021, when Baldwin discharged a prop firearm that had a live round in it, killing the film’s director of photography Halyna Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza. Baldwin has maintained that he didn’t pull the trigger on the gun that killed the cinematographer when it was discharged. The actor and Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed pleaded not guilty to initial charges, but the young legacy armorer was later charged with evidence tampering, and subsequently sentenced to 18 months in prison for involuntary manslaughter after going to trial.
Baldwin’s charges of involuntary manslaughter were dropped “without prejudice,” but a year later, a grand jury re-indicted Baldwin on those charges, following a new investigation into the shooting. The final twist came for the actor when Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer dismissed his involuntary manslaughter case in July. Baldwin’s attorneys said prosecutors and Santa Fe sheriffs had concealed evidence from the actor that emerged in March, after Gutierrez-Reed’s trial; Baldwin openly wept in court as the case was dismissed with prejudice, meaning he cannot face trial again in the shooting.
“I think there’s more to come,” Baldwin told Duchovny during their revealing and in-depth interview. “There’s more to come, but the more to come is now my effort, and it’s going to be undeniably a successful effort, to raise and to expose what really happened. I was counterpunching. I was on the defensive. I was being accused. I was being indicted.”
As he elaborated on his perspective on the ordeal he endured over the last three years, Baldwin went on to claim that the mainstream and tabloid press “suppressed every story” where he looked favorable and “amplified every story that could hurt” him over the three years since the tragic on-set shooting.
“The truth of what happened has never been told, never. We have more shit that’s going to come out in ensuing legal filings and so forth that… These last three years, people have just dined out. Because in this country, when people hate you on that level, they want three things. They want you to die,” he added.
Baldwin then told Duchovny that his enemies are dead set on seeing him go to prison for the shooting and to be “canceled,” which he likened to being in prison “or being dead because you roam the earth and you’re invisible.” Still, Baldwin was optimistic about his career prospects after the judge’s stunning decision to dismiss the case.
“I do believe that, by the communications I’ve had lately, things are coming back my way to work, and I’m happy about that because I’ve got seven kids,” he said. “But I’ve also enjoyed the fact that there’s so much of this case that is not known because we didn’t have a full trial.”
The Emmy winner called Judge Sommer’s dismissal a “very informed decision” but lamented that there was no jury trial. A jury of his peers looking at the facts around the shooting and finding him not guilty would be ”a little bit better,” as all of the facts would be there to be presented to jurors. The evidence includes “troves of things to present that [prosecutors] did.” It’s unclear what exactly Baldwin is referring to at this moment in the interview.
The three-year ordeal appears to have left Baldwin exhausted.
“I’m going to take a break,” he said, wrapping up the topic. I don’t want to talk about this for a while. I want to kind of take a nap.”
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