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Opening statements to begin in trial of Alec Baldwin, charged in shooting death on “Rust” film set. Here’s what to know.
Opening statements are set to start Wednesday in the trial of award-winning actor Alec Baldwin, who is charged in the shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the film “Rust.” Baldwin has pleaded not guilty in the case.
Jury selection Tuesday was marked by delays, with the questioning of the 70 potential jurors starting several hours later than expected. But by the end of the day, that pool had been winnowed to 16 jurors, 4 of whom are alternates. The 11 women and five men seated will hear the case over the coming weeks and decide whether to convict the 66-year-old actor.
Ross D. Franklin / AP
What happened on the “Rust” set?
Around 2 p.m. local time on Oct. 21, 2021, a prop firearm held by Baldwin went off, killing Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza during a rehearsal in a small church on the set. Baldwin, the Western’s star and coproducer, has said he pulled back the Colt .45’s hammer, but did not pull the trigger.
Authorities were called to the set at the Bonanza Creek Ranch and Hutchins was taken to the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque via helicopter, where she died of her injuries, according to the sheriff’s office at the time.
Authorities who searched the set recovered live ammunition. The New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator determined in 2022 that the incident was an accident.
What charge does Alec Baldwin face?
Alec Baldwin faces a charge of involuntary manslaughter, a felony. If convicted, he could face up to a year and a half in prison. He has pleaded not guilty.
He was initially charged in January 2023 but prosecutors dismissed those counts three months later. Prosecutors again indicted Baldwin on a charge of involuntary manslaughter in January.
Baldwin asked for the charge to be dismissed, but the judge overseeing the case rejected his request.
Where is the trial, when does it start and how long will it last?
Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer is presiding over the trial in New Mexico’s First District Court, in Santa Fe.
The judge set the trial calendar to run from July 9-19. Jury selection was completed Tuesday, which means opening statements are on tap for Wednesday. Courtroom proceedings are expected to conclude by July 19, after which the case will go to the jury for deliberations.
Court begins at 8:30 a.m. MDT, 10:30 a.m. EDT. The judge said she expects court to break at 10:15 a.m. local time for lunch, then at 3:30 p.m.
While cameras were not allowed in the courtroom during jury selection, the trial will be livestreamed.
Will Alec Baldwin testify?
Baldwin’s attorneys have not said whether the actor will take the stand in his own defense. The actor has been in court for proceedings and is expected to attend every day.
Who else is expected to testify?
The state’s witness list contains 44 names, while the defense lists 14 individuals as potential witnesses.
While prosecutors wanted to call the film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who has already been convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the case, the judge ruled in June she could not be compelled to testify against Baldwin. She did not testify in her own defense.
On the prosecution’s list of dozens of potential witnesses is Joel Souza, the film’s director who was also wounded in the shooting, along with several people who also also testified at Gutierrez-Reed’s trial, such as Seth Kenney, who owned the prop weapons company that supplied the film’s ammunition; Wyatt Mortenson, a stuntman on the film; and Gabrielle Pickle, a line producer.
The defense’s shorter list of potential witnesses includes David Halls, assistant director and safety coordinator; Ryan Winterstern, a producer who also testified in Gutierrez-Reed’s trial; and other members of the crew, among others.
The Los Angeles-based Hutchins, 42, was a self-described “restless dreamer” and “adrenaline junkie” who grew up on a remote Soviet military base. The Ukranian-born cinematographer earned a degree in International Journalism from Kyiv National University and graduated from the American Film Institute conservatory. Widely regarded as a rising star, her work included “Archenemy,” starring Joe Manganiello, “Blindfire” and “Darlin’,” which premiered at the SXSW film festival in 2019.
Baldwin announced in 2022 he had settled a wrongful death lawsuit with Hutchins’ family: her husband, Matthew Hutchins, and their son, Andros.
Has anyone else been prosecuted in the case?
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the armorer who oversaw firearms on the set, was also charged with involuntary manslaughter. Though she pleaded not guilty, she was convicted in March and sentenced to 18 months behind bars after a trial overseen by the same judge overseeing Baldwin’s case. Gutierrez-Reed was acquitted on a charge of tampering with evidence.
Earlier, Halls pleaded no contest to unsafe handling of a firearm. Halls, who agreed to cooperate in the shooting investigation, received a suspended sentence of six months probation.
The production company overseeing the movie was fined $136,000 fine, the maximum under state law, by New Mexico’s Occupational Health and Safety Bureau over the incident.
An Israeli attack on Iran damaged facilities at a secretive military base southeast of the Iranian capital that experts in the past have linked to Tehran’s onetime nuclear weapons program and at another base tied to its ballistic missile program, satellite photos analyzed Sunday by The Associated Press show.
Some of the buildings damaged sat in Iran’s Parchin military base, where the International Atomic Energy Agency suspects Iran in the past conducted tests of high explosives that could trigger a nuclear weapon. Iran long has insisted its nuclear program is peaceful, though the IAEA, Western intelligence agencies and others say Tehran had an active weapons program up until 2003.
The other damage could be seen at the nearby Khojir military base, which analysts believe hides an underground tunnel system and missile production sites.
Israel launched a series of strikes on Iranian military facilities in retaliation for the barrage of ballistic missiles the Islamic republic fired on Israel earlier this month.
Planet Labs PBC / AP
Iran’s military has not acknowledged damage at either Khojir or Parchin from Israel’s attack early Saturday, though it has said the assault killed four Iranian soldiers working in the country’s air defense systems.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did the Israeli military.
However, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday told an audience that the Israeli attack “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed,” while stopping short of calling for an immediate retaliatory strike. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that the strikes “severely harmed” Iran and achieved all of Israel’s goals.
“The air force struck throughout Iran. We severely harmed Iran’s defense capabilities and its ability to produce missiles that are aimed toward us,” Netanyahu said in his first public comments on the strikes.
It remains unclear how many sites in total were targeted in the Israeli attack. There have been no images of damage so far released by Iran’s military.
Planet Labs PBC / AP
Iranian officials have identified affected areas as being in Ilam, Khuzestan and Tehran provinces. Burned fields could be seen in satellite images from Planet Labs PBC around Iran’s Tange Bijar natural gas production site in Ilam province on Saturday, though it wasn’t immediately clear if it was related to the attack. Ilam province sits on the Iran-Iraq border in western Iran.
The most telling damage could be seen in Planet Labs images of Parchin, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) southeast of downtown Tehran near the Mamalu Dam. There, one structure appeared to be totally destroyed while others looked damaged in the attack.
At Khojir, some 20 kilometers (12 miles) away from downtown Tehran, damage could be seen on at least two structures in satellite images.
Analysts including Decker Eveleth at the Virginia-based think tank CNA, Joe Truzman at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former United Nations weapon inspector David Albright, as well as other open-source experts, first identified the damage to the bases. The locations of the two bases correspond to videos obtained by the AP showing Iranian air defense systems firing in the vicinity early Saturday.
At Parchin, Albright’s Institute for Science and International Security identified the destroyed building against a mountainside as “Taleghan 2.” It said an archive of Iranian nuclear data earlier seized by Israel identified the building as housing “a smaller, elongated high explosive chamber and a flash X-ray system to examine small-scale high explosive tests.”
“Such tests may have included high explosives compressing a core of natural uranium, simulating the initiation of a nuclear explosive,” a 2018 report by the institute says.
Planet Labs PBC / AP
In a message posted to the social platform X early Sunday, the institute added: “It is not certain whether Iran used uranium at ‘Taleghan 2,’ but it is possible it studied the compression of natural uranium hemispheres, which would explain its hasty and secretive renovation efforts following the IAEA’s request to access Parchin in 2011.”
It’s unclear what, if any, equipment would have been inside of the “Taleghan 2” building early Saturday. There were no Israeli strikes on Iran’s oil industry, nor its nuclear enrichment sites or its nuclear power plant at Bushehr during the assault.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, who leads the IAEA, confirmed that on X, saying “Iran’s nuclear facilities have not been impacted.”
“Inspectors are safe and continue their vital work,” he added. “I call for prudence and restraint from actions that could jeopardize the safety & security of nuclear & other radioactive materials.”
Other buildings destroyed at Khojir and Parchin likely included a warehouse and other buildings where Iran used industrial mixers to create the solid fuel needed for its extensive ballistic missile arsenal, Eveleth said.
In a statement issued immediately after the attack Saturday, the Israeli military said it targeted “missile manufacturing facilities used to produce the missiles that Iran fired at the state of Israel over the last year.”
Destroying such sites could greatly disrupt Iran’s ability to manufacture new ballistic missiles to replenish its arsenal after the two attacks on Israel. Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which oversees the country’s ballistic missile program, has been silent since Saturday’s attack.
Iran’s overall ballistic missile arsenal, which includes shorter-range missiles unable to reach Israel, was estimated to be “over 3,000” by Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, then-commander of the U.S. military’s Central Command, in testimony to the U.S. Senate in 2022. In the time since, Iran has fired hundreds of missiles in a series of attacks.
There have been no videos or photos posted to social media of missile parts or damage in civilian neighborhoods following the recent attack – suggesting that the Israeli strikes were far more accurate than Iran’s ballistic missile barrages targeting Israel in April and October. Israel relied on aircraft-fired missiles during its attack.
However, one factory appeared to have been hit in Shamsabad Industrial City, just south of Tehran near Imam Khomeini International Airport, the country’s main gateway to the outside world. Online videos of the damaged building corresponded to an address for a firm known as TIECO, which advertises itself as building advanced machinery used in Iran’s oil and gas industry.
Officials at TIECO requested the AP write the company a letter before responding to questions. The firm did not immediately reply to a letter sent to it.
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