deadline.com: “Just because there was a tragedy doesn’t mean a crime was committed,” Jason Bowles added to the five women and seven men sitting in judgment of his client for the fatality on the indie western starring and produced by Alec Baldwin. “It does not mean that Hannah Gutierrez-Reed caused the crimes they have charged her with.”
4 comments:
This was a really interesting article to read about the Rust shooting situation. I didn’t know a ton about the situation prior to reading this article about the trial, while I had obviously heard about it since it was relatively major news, I hadn’t heard about the armorer’s involvement. Ever since I first heard about this incident, I still don’t understand why there would be live ammunition on a movie set at all. I imagine that one of the easiest ways to prevent an issue with someone being shot by a gun is to not have live ammo, because then they can’t really be shot. Reading that Gutierrez apparently had a history of not taking great care of the weapons on set also raises some pretty major alarm bells. There’s an interesting quote at the beginning about how just because a tragedy occurs, doesn’t mean a crime was committed, which is not a statement I necessarily agree with, but it generally seems like most freak accidents can be drawn back to a point of negligence. Whether in this situation, the person who was negligent was Gutierrez for not performing her job to an adequate standard, or the producers for continuing to employ someone who seemed to not be doing their safety job safely is certainly a debate, but I don’t think either party is completely in the clear.
I have been very conflicted about this story as it has gone on, and I've tried to stay as up to date as I could on it because it has potential impacts on our industry. I can see how some people might believe the blame is on Baldwin but can also see how some might put blame on Gutierrez. Ultimately, I think the blame does lie with Baldwin as he is the person who pulled the trigger on the gun. Hearing his claims that he never pulled the trigger have always been humorous and aggravating as a gun will not fire unless the trigger is pulled. That said, it should never have gotten to the point in the production where Baldwin was handed a loaded gun actually capable of killing someone, so I can see how Gutierrez would be the next likely target for being at fault. This while situation could have been so easily avoided, and the fact that the gun was pointed straight at anyone to begin with should have been cause for concern. I am interested to see where this trail goes to, and what impacts it has on prop guns moving forward.
It’s interesting to get these periodical updates from the Rust shooting, since it happened so long ago at this point. It’s also kind of surprising the turns it’s been taking – this is the first update I’ve had in a while, so I’m catching up quite a bit here. I didn’t know that evidence tampering came up as a charge. I don’t think that either one is completely innocent; in fact I think there are more people at fault here than can be feasibly prosecuted. I realized while I read the article that it’s a bit unfortunate that Halyna Hutchins’ death was scarcely mentioned. It feels almost disrespectful at this point somehow. I will say that the one good thing that has come out of this tragedy is the awareness it’s raising; after all even two years after the shooting the case is still ongoing and there’s still media coverage of it.
I think at this point Baldwin and Gutierrez should both go to jail for the same amount of time as it seems there’s evidence form both sides it was the fault of multiple people. Loosely following the story from these updates it seems that Baldwin shouldn’t have been dicking around with a gun even though it was a prop gun; realistic guns even if a prop noted it can’t fire shouldn’t be pointed at people, played with, or “pretend” fired. Also the fact the gun was loaded and could kill and the claims were that it wasn’t supposed to be able to fire places blame on the armorer for tampering or negligence along with not informing Baldwin correctly. I think they should just both go to jail for a while and then call it a day. I can’t imagine the money time and resources going into keeping this trial go on for as long as it has. I’m sure the victim’s friends and families are done hearing about it and probably aggravated that people are just arguing who’s fault it is while often leaving Hutchins completely out of the story aside from just being the named victim.
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