Cont: Baldwin fatally shoots crewmember on set of movie with prop gun (2)

JayUtah

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JayUtah
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Actor safety is a big part of the equation, but so is safety for the technical workers. The unions who do all the technical work (riggers, IATSE, etc.) usually need the set and adjacent areas clear so that their workers can work safely and not have untrained onlookers (this means you, actors!) endangering them by getting in the way. While a stagehand is obviously more replaceable than an A-list actor, they nevertheless have a right to a safe work environment.

 
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Crazy Chainsaw said:
True, the main reason for that is also safety and insurance, if an actor is hurt or disfigured by an accident on set or by a crazy fan, that can cost the producers more than the movie will Make in profits.
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Maybe, I don't know, but the more immediate concern is that the practice is so ingrained now, that actors can feel disrespected and kick off if it isn't followed. I saw this happen a little dramatically a couple of weeks ago when the 1st forgot about an actor 'locked' in a back room.
 
Shrinker said:
Maybe, I don't know, but the more immediate concern is that the practice is so ingrained now, that actors can feel disrespected and kick off if it isn't followed. I saw this happen a little dramatically a couple of weeks ago when the 1st forgot about an actor 'locked' in a back room.
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Why did they lock an actor in the back room, was he trying to run away?
 
JayUtah said:
Actor safety is a big part of the equation, but so is safety for the technical workers. The unions who do all the technical work (riggers, IATSE, etc.) usually need the set and adjacent areas clear so that their workers can work safely and not have untrained onlookers (this means you, actors!) endangering them by getting in the way. While a stagehand is obviously more replaceable than an A-list actor, they nevertheless have a right to a safe work environment.
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Absolutely that too.
 
Crazy Chainsaw said:
Why did they lock an actor in the back room, was he trying to run away?
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That was the scene. One person locked behind a door, while two others discussed getting him out. The AD released the two outside while technical work happened but seems to forget the third was inside.
 
I think the fact that Baldwin pointed a gun at the victim is an undeniable point for the prosecution. In the end it will boil down to the question:
- Is an actor free to point a real gun at a person, allthough he is convinced that the gun is not loaded?
- And if something bad happens because he pointed it at a person, is he partly to blame for it?
 
Shrinker said:
That was the scene. One person locked behind a door, while two others discussed getting him out. The AD released the two outside while technical work happened but seems to forget the third was inside.
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It would be hilarious if the door wasn't actually locked, since it's a set and actors, not a real "person locked in a room" situation.
 
Thermal said:
The concept of an employer/supervisor being responsible for the consequences of unsafe working conditions is pretty well-trod ground though, no? Maybe it's the precise four corners of the role of a Producer that is ambiguous in the law?
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from what i understand it’s basically that his executive producer title was a vanity title so in that sense he wasn’t really an employer
 
carlosy said:
I think the fact that Baldwin pointed a gun at the victim is an undeniable point for the prosecution. In the end it will boil down to the question:
- Is an actor free to point a real gun at a person, allthough he is convinced that the gun is not loaded?
- And if something bad happens because he pointed it at a person, is he partly to blame for it?
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It's going to come down to how did Baldwin know there was an active charge in the gun, and how would he have prodicted the trigger would stick in the pulled position? The Procecution already committed the logical fallacy of appeal to authority, without evidence, and that is going to bite them in the end, since they destroyed the gun.
 
Crazy Chainsaw said:
It's going to come down to how did Baldwin know there was an active charge in the gun, and how would he have prodicted the trigger would stick in the pulled position? The Procecution already committed the logical fallacy of appeal to authority, without evidence, and that is going to bite them in the end, since they destroyed the gun.
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I hope it doesn't come down to the state of the gun because that is a sideshow and something needs to be settled here.

Unless the prosecution come up with something new and interesting, what's at issue is whether an unskilled employee has the right to assume the equipment he's using has been made safe by the skilled people employed specifically to do so.

If no, can the defence argue a special exception is made when the employee is an actor and therefore being almost completely distracted by acting/improvising 'in character'?

But if yes, can the prosecution argue a special exemption when the equipment is a gun because gun safety mantra is absolute and overrides every other consideration?
 
Crazy Chainsaw said:
It's going to come down to how did Baldwin know there was an active charge in the gun, and how would he have prodicted the trigger would stick in the pulled position? The Procecution already committed the logical fallacy of appeal to authority, without evidence, and that is going to bite them in the end, since they destroyed the gun.
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The prosecution isn't claiming that Baldwin knw there was a live round in the gun.
 
dirtywick said:
from what i understand it’s basically that his executive producer title was a vanity title so in that sense he wasn’t really an employer
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This would make more sense than the notion I came up with trying to parse the judge's comments as reported in the media. (It really changes things to read the actual filings and have qualified lawyers around to ask questions of. I haven't had time to figure out how to find the actual filings in this case.)

If it's simply that Baldwin wasn't constructively in charge, then it makes legal sense to me to consider him no different from any other actor. If someone wants to make hay out of him being an executive producer even only in name and therefore exempted himself from safety training, that's not really a productive avenue. If you're willfully negligent, it doesn't largely matter why you say you were.

My notion had to do with the respondeat superior doctrine that we've alluded to. It applies both to torts and criminal actions, but slightly differently in each environment. Normally the master and servant are two distinct individuals. If a prosecution tries to treat the same individual as the master in some arguments and the servant in other arguments, this could lead to "pick a lane" problems. I don't think that's what's being done here, though. It was just a thought.
 
Crazy Chainsaw said:
I know that but it was Impossible for Baldwin to know both there was a live round in the gun...
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If there was any knowledge by anyone that there was a live round in the gun, this would be a murder charge. It doesn't matter in the slightest if he could or couldn't have known this.

...and that the trigger could stick.
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Since there is zero evidence of this happening, it also doesn't matter. It's just fantasy speculation, which has no place in a finding of facts.

The facts are straightforward: G-R allowed live rounds to get mixed in with dummies on the set and was spectacularly careless in her duty to make sure that exactly that did not happen.

Baldwin is playing the "just following instructions" card. As a matter of movie making policy, he's probably in the clear. As a matter of safe firearm handling, everyone in that scenario was reckless, including Hitchens instructing him to shoot at her armpit and Souza knowingly being downrange of a firearm.

So this is gonna be weird. Established Hollywood practices seem stunningly reckless. So are you in the clear, responsibility wise, to go along with stunningly reckless practices, or should a reasonable person have said "you know, you guys appear to be freaking nuts"? On G-R's other cinematic endeavor, actor Nicholas Cage walked off the set when he saw how ****** up G-R was performing. Baldwin had the same knowledge that she was ******* up royally (misfires on set, etc).

Since Baldwin is an influential multimillionaire, I'm gonna guess that the "just following orders" defense will prevail and he walks.
 
Crazy Chainsaw said:
I know that but it was Impossible for Baldwin to know both there was a live round in the gun and that the trigger could stick.
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It is a fundamental principle of gun safety that you can never know for sure if your gun is loaded, and therefore you should always treat it as if it is loaded. This is a concept so basic that we can reasonably expect that even someone like Alec Baldwin will understand it.
 
The idea of misfires on set being a regular thing still astounds me. I mean, I've shot more thousands of rounds than I could ever count, and never accidentally discharged that I recall. Yet this professional armorer had guns accidentally blasting off pretty regularly, on sets with 5,000 total blank rounds bought (including dummies).
 
theprestige said:
It is a fundamental principle of gun safety that you can never know for sure if your gun is loaded, and therefore you should always treat it as if it is loaded. This is a concept so basic that we can reasonably expect that even someone like Alec Baldwin will understand it.
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My brother, who is generally a responsible gun owner, was showing off a new over/under to me a while back. He broke it before handing it to me to show those neon dry fire shells in the barrels, then encouraged me to dry fire in his flipping living room. He totally did not get why I refused. His reasoning was along the lines of "how could you even clean it if you don't accept at some point that it is safe to handle as if unloaded?" Which is kind of I point, I guess. But I'm still never pulling a trigger unless I am comfortable with whatever the barrel is pointing at being shot, and living rooms don't qualify.
 
theprestige said:
It is a fundamental principle of gun safety that you can never know for sure if your gun is loaded, and therefore you should always treat it as if it is loaded. This is a concept so basic that we can reasonably expect that even someone like Alec Baldwin will understand it.
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Amen. Literally the first rule you teach a new gun operator. My grandfather, who lived in the rural West and had a small arsenal of long guns for hunting, rephrased it: "Treat every gun as if it's loaded, cocked, and has a hair trigger."

Thermal said:
But I'm still never pulling a trigger unless I am comfortable with whatever the barrel is pointing at being shot, and living rooms don't qualify.
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There's a "drawing room" joke lurking around that statement.
 
JayUtah said:
Amen. Literally the first rule you teach a new gun operator. My grandfather, who lived in the rural West and had a small arsenal of long guns for hunting, rephrased it: "Treat every gun as if it's loaded, cocked, and has a hair trigger."
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I tried using the basic gun safety rules to argue for Baldwin's responsibility near the beginning of the original thread. Various people made it clear it did not apply in this case. It only applies to those "other people".

Ranb
 
The jury was sent home for the day without hearing any testimony. Defense has filed a motion to dismiss the charges because the prosecution failed to disclose that a friend of Thell Reed (H G-R's father) turned in some bullets to the police. The judge is clearly very disturbed by this issue and is holding a hearing to take testimony on the issue.
 
Yeah, does look a bit fishy for the police how they 'burried' that bullets.
Allthough all that 'where does the life ammo came from' seems to be a side show, to me.

What actual difference does it make for the Baldwin case? None
Could it have had some impact in the case against the armourer? I don't know. Maybe if someone actually smuggled live ammo into the armourer's cases, trying to sabotage her work, that's what the defense even implied today. But still, it's her responsibility to check every single round before putting it into the gun.
 
carlosy said:
Allthough all that 'where does the life ammo came from' seems to be a side show, to me.

What actual difference does it make for the Baldwin case? None
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The defence is trying to say that the ammo came from a third party to diminish the negligence of Gutierrez-Reed. This is to help them say Baldwin was rightly relying on the production staff when they said "cold-gun." Since the charge relies on Baldwins negligence, putting others negligence a step further away from him could be important to the jury.

The fact that the police didn't disclose some information (either through misjudgement or deliberately) that could be used to support this theory and it had to be discovered by the defence and brought in on cross examination is a real problem for the prosecution.

It would be a shame to see Baldwin get off for the state's misconduct. Instead of the case going to a jury.
 
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Pooneil said:
The defence is trying to say that the ammo came from a third party to diminish the negligence of Gutierrez-Reed. This is to help them say Baldwin was rightly relying on the production staff when they said "cold-gun." Since the charge relies on Baldwins negligence, putting others negligence a step further away from him could be important to the jury.

The fact that the police didn't disclose some information (either through misjudgement or deliberately) that could be used to support this theory and it had to be discovered by the defence and brought in on cross examination is a real problem for the prosecution.

It would be a shame to see Baldwin get off for the state's misconduct. Instead of the case going to a jury.
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Why?
 
Pooneil said:
The defence is trying to say that the ammo came from a third party to diminish the negligence of Gutierrez-Reed. This is to help them say Baldwin was rightly relying on the production staff when they said "cold-gun." Since the charge relies on Baldwins negligence, putting others negligence a step further away from him could be important to the jury.
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Sure, but all that doesn't do away that Baldwin actually pointed a real gun at a person, unnessecary, off-script, and very likely pulled the trigger.
 
Shrinker said:
Maybe, I don't know, but the more immediate concern is that the practice is so ingrained now, that actors can feel disrespected and kick off if it isn't followed. I saw this happen a little dramatically a couple of weeks ago when the 1st forgot about an actor 'locked' in a back room.
Click to expand...

That happened during the recording of the radio series of Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy, all the actors were recorded separately so they appropriated any suitably sound isolated space in the BBC studio they were using. Including store rooms etc. One guest star was locked in a cupboard to record his lines and then forgotten until lunchtime.
 
Pooneil said:
Since the charge relies on Baldwins negligence, putting others negligence a step further away from him could be important to the jury.
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It's pretty important when you're talking about criminal negligence versus a (civil) tort. In tort law you have more leeway to apportion blame and talk about the proximity of negligence. In criminal law, negligence has to be pretty one-sided to stick to the defendant.

The fact that the police didn't disclose some information (either through misjudgement or deliberately) that could be used to support this theory and it had to be discovered by the defence and brought in on cross examination is a real problem for the prosecution.
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The other side to the story is that the defense has been alleging a number of Brady violations (which I finally found the briefs and orders for). However, a lot of them are being denied. Not everything the prosecutor and police acquire is discoverable. But this is how a spirited defense works if you have the money. You whittle away what you can.

It would be a shame to see Baldwin get off for the state's misconduct. Instead of the case going to a jury.
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Welcome to the present condition of American prosecution. I serve enough booze to enough public defenders (speaking of a "spirited" defense...) to hear all the stories of prosecutorial misconduct—mostly Brady violations—almost none of which gets pursued because the defense usually doesn't have the resources. Prosecutors count on the defense not to catch them. I've heard this from former prosecutors too, at least at my local and state level. This doesn't work with wealthy defendants.
 
Is it significant that it is the same judge for both trials? Doesn’t seem like a coincidence, but does it matter in any way?
 
I guess the case is done. The judge doesn't even want the proscutor as a witness anymore (previously she wanted her). The prosecutor though has now turned herself in as a witness, trying to 'defend' her actions.
 
The prosecutor Morrissey is testifying. The woman who had been working with her and IIRC gave the state's opening statement - Erlinda Johson - has resigned from the case over this issue. Wow!
 
Horhang said:
Is it significant that it is the same judge for both trials? Doesn’t seem like a coincidence, but does it matter in any way?
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It shouldn't matter, and it's probably not a coincidence. In smaller districts there's often only two or three judges who sit on criminal cases, so a given judge may hear a lot of cases that are incidentally related, and "frequent flyer" defendants may find themselves before the same judge many times.

This is Santa Fe, though. So it's probably a conscious choice to have a single judge who's familiar with the incident and arguments.
 
True madness. No prosecutor should care enough about a case to conceal evidence. That should only happen in TV shows and movies.
 
carlosy said:
I think the fact that Baldwin pointed a gun at the victim is an undeniable point for the prosecution. In the end it will boil down to the question:
- Is an actor free to point a real gun at a person, allthough he is convinced that the gun is not loaded?
- And if something bad happens because he pointed it at a person, is he partly to blame for it?
Click to expand...

Don't forget Baldwin was a producer on the film.
In fact, this whole film is his baby...he bought the story, set up a production company and then got other productions comanies is join in
Since He was pretty much calling the shots, the whole deplorable safety situation is at least partly his reponsiblity. He was not just an actor on this project, it was his project, period.
 
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