Alec Baldwin Loses Bid to Exclude Potentially Damaging Calls to Wife, Assistant
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Alec Baldwin failed Thursday to prevent jurors on his involuntary manslaughter trial from hearing the possibly damaging private phone calls he made to his wife Hilaria and an assistant just hours after the accidental shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the western movie Rust.
During the two calls recorded while Baldwin was giving his first sit-down interview to investigators on Oct. 21, 2021, the actor is heard asking Hilaria and the assistant about the family’s plans to join him in New Mexico. Baldwin alludes to how the couple’s eldest daughter Carmen was due to film a cameo for the movie and says the family should still make the trip because their travel plans were non-refundable. With the film’s production on hold due to the accident, Baldwin is heard saying, “I won’t work, and we’ll go enjoy ourselves.” At the time of the call, Baldwin had not yet been informed Hutchins was dead.
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“He is at the police station. He does not know Ms. Hutchins has passed, but he knows she is critically injured — so injured she has been taken away in a helicopter. If the defense hadn’t spent all this time saying how panicked and upset he was, I’m not sure it would be relevant. But he is actually planning, basically, a vacation, and he tells his family, ‘Still come to New Mexico, we’ll have a good time.’ So, this is obviously information that directly contradicts what the defense has argued,” special prosecutor Kari Morrissey told the court Thursday as she argued for the calls to be admitted into evidence.
One of Baldwin’s lawyers argued the calls were too potentially prejudicial for jurors to hear. “None of this is probative to any elements of crime he’s charged with,” lawyer Heather M. LeBlanc told the court. “The danger of unfair prejudice is substantial, and it substantially outweighs any probative value. He’s talking about his family, he’s talking about plans they have, and there’s danger the jury will misinterpret that or misuse that to view him as callous, or that he doesn’t care about Ms. Hutchins, when actually that is not accurate.”
New Mexico Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer ultimately sided with prosecutors, saying Baldwin’s defense opened the door to his state of mind after the shooting by portraying him as distraught during cross-examination of the first witness in the trial on Wednesday.
“I do find that it’s relevant to basically respond to [the defense] talking about how upset Mr. Baldwin was,” the judge said as she issued her ruling allowing the calls. “Certainly you considered that fact of consequence, and I’m deciding this rebuttal information is of consequence.”
Baldwin, 66, has pleaded not guilty to his single count of involuntary manslaughter in the case. The actor claims he didn’t pull the trigger on the replica revolver that fired the deadly shot and was deprived of the opportunity to check the weapon for damage or modification because the FBI broke it during testing. The actor is adamant that others on the Rust set were the ones responsible for gun safety and that he had no reason to suspect his prop weapon had been loaded with a live .45 caliber round after the movie’s first assistant director checked and declared it a “cold gun,” meaning it contained only inert, dummy rounds.
For their part, prosecutors allege that Baldwin should have checked the gun himself, and because he didn’t, he was obligated to still follow the basic safety rules for handling a real firearm. They argue Baldwin never should have pointed the revolver at Hutchins while manipulating it, and they believe Baldwin is lying about not pulling the trigger.
In his opening statement on Wednesday, Baldwin’s lawyer Alex Spiro argued that even if Baldwin did pull the trigger, that only makes him a “liar,” not liable for manslaughter. “It was obviously a tragic accident, but Alec committed no homicide,” Spiro said. “Alec took the gun from those charged with its safety. He did not tamper with it. He did not load it himself. He did not leave it unattended. … There was a dedicated professional there, off-camera, whose sole, sacred responsibility was that prop’s safety.”
Spiro was referring to Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the young armorer convicted of involuntary manslaughter at her own trial last March. She’s now serving an 18-month sentence while she appeals the conviction.
Jurors on Baldwin’s trial have heard testimony from seven witnesses so far, including Alessandro Pietta, the Italian gun maker who personally manufactured the replica gun at the center of the case. Pietta, who traveled from Italy, testified that the gun made to look like a 19th-century Colt revolver would not fire without a trigger pull.
Baldwin’s wife Hilaria, his younger brother Stephen Baldwin, and his older sister Elizabeth Keuchler have been spotted sitting behind the actor during his trial now underway in Santa Fe and expected to last eight days.
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