Carmack-Altwies, Mary

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    Alec Baldwin’s Long Journey to Court After ‘Rust’ Shooting

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    It’s been a challenge to follow the case. Here are its many twists and turns. The actor Alec Baldwin is scheduled to go on trial next month for involuntary manslaughter in Santa Fe, N.M.Baldwin’s long journey to the courtroom started on Oct. 21, 2021, on the set of the western movie “Rust,” when the gun he was holding while blocking out a shot discharged, firing a live round that injured the movie’s director, Joel Souza, and killed its cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins.It was an almost unimaginable tragedy, but Baldwin soon found himself in legal jeopardy, too. The subsequent saga has amounted to a high-stakes version of a familiar Baldwin ritual: He does or says something controversial; then, in an attempt to be understood, he doubles down on whatever he said or did, inviting further scrutiny; finally, feeling victimized and aggrieved, he vows to stop engaging with the media. He was in this third stage by the time I started reporting a few months ago. To trace the improbable arc of his prosecution, I interviewed more than 30 people in New York and Santa Fe, reviewed numerous public court filings, police records and videos, and obtained additional documents under New Mexico’s freedom-of-information act.It’s been a challenge to follow the case through all of its many twists and turns. Here’s what you need to know as the trial approaches.Troubling details quickly emerged about the film’s set.The shooting occurred at 1:46 p.m. at the Bonanza Creek Ranch, a family-owned Old West movie set about 20 miles southeast of Santa Fe. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Long, Strange Road to Alec Baldwin’s Manslaughter Trial

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      On the afternoon of Oct. 21, 2021, Mary Carmack-Altwies, the district attorney for New Mexico’s First Judicial District, was driving along a lonely stretch of the mountain highway connecting Santa Fe and Taos when her cell service abruptly returned and her phone started pinging — message after message. She pulled over to the side of the road and began scrolling: Alec Baldwin had accidentally shot two people on a movie set in her jurisdiction. Carmack-Altwies had planned to spend the next couple of days alone in the mountains before celebrating her 43rd birthday with her wife, a retired investigator for the state, and their two children. Clearly that was not going to happen.Listen to this article, read by Pete SimonelliThe shooting occurred at 1:46 p.m. that day at the Bonanza Creek Ranch, a family-owned Old West movie set about 20 miles southeast of Santa Fe that had been rented out by “Rust,” an independent film that Baldwin was both starring in and producing. The bullet he inadvertently fired passed through the upper body of the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and lodged near the spine of Joel Souza, the director. Souza was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Santa Fe; Hutchins was airlifted to a trauma center in Albuquerque and died a short time later.Carmack-Altwies was nearing the end of her first year in office. She had been an assistant district attorney specializing in violent crimes when her boss made a bid for Congress. She ran to succeed him — her first foray into electoral politics — and won easily, inheriting a jurisdiction that covers three counties: Los Alamos, Rio Arriba and Santa Fe. She’s a Democrat in a Democratic district, though the label connotes something very different in New Mexico, a rural hunting state whose voters tend to place a high value on the Second Amendment, than it does in, say, New York or California. Carmack-Altwies turned around and went back to her office in Santa Fe, where she spent most of the night on the phone with the local police, trying to make sure that the movie set, now a potential crime scene, was properly secured. In the days that followed, reporters from all over the world descended on Santa Fe. Carmack-Altwies held her first news conference about the incident six days later outside the Sheriff’s Department. She was asked if she intended to prosecute anyone. “I do not make rash decisions, and I do not rush to judgment,” she said. “All options are on the table at this point.”Bonanza Creek Ranch, the movie set where Alec Baldwin fatally shot the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins with a prop gun in October 2021, leading to his indictment on charges of involuntary manslaughter.Roberto E. Rosales/Albuquerque Journal, via ZUMA/AlamyWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Rust’ Armorer Transferred Narcotics on Day of Shooting, Prosecutor Says

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      A new charge of evidence tampering was announced as a departing investigator accused the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office of “reprehensible and unprofessional” conduct.The original armorer on the film “Rust,” who was charged with involuntary manslaughter after a gun that was loaded with live ammunition fired on the set and killed the cinematographer, will face an additional charge of evidence tampering related to narcotics, a special prosecutor in the case said Thursday.The new charge against the armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, “relates to the transfer of narcotics to another person” on Oct. 21, 2021, the day of the shooting, “with the intent to prevent criminal prosecution,” the prosecutor, Kari T. Morrissey, said in a statement. A lawyer for Ms. Gutierrez-Reed said that she intended to plead not guilty to both the evidence tampering and the involuntary manslaughter charges.The additional charge was announced as tensions between prosecutors and the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office over the case began to spill into public view. An investigator who was removed from the case after working on it for months for the district attorney’s office sharply criticized the sheriff’s office earlier this week in an email to prosecutors.“The conduct of the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office during and after their initial investigation is reprehensible and unprofessional to a degree I still have no words for,” the investigator, Robert Shilling, wrote in the email he sent Tuesday. “Not I or 200 more proficient investigators than I can/could clean up the mess delivered to your office in October 2022 (1 year since the initial incident … inexcusable).”Mr. Shilling declined to elaborate on the email on Thursday, writing that he was bound by a nondisclosure agreement. Juan Rios, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office, declined to comment on the criticism.Mr. Shilling, an independent contractor for the district attorney’s office who has reported to Ms. Morrissey in recent months, had made the criticism in a note in which he addressed a decision to take him off the case and submitted a notice to terminate his own contract. The email was provided to The New York Times on Thursday in response to a public records inquiry.The case has faced numerous complications since a gun that the actor Alec Baldwin was practicing with on the set of “Rust” went off in 2021, killing the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and wounding its director, Joel Souza.The original prosecution team initially charged Mr. Baldwin with involuntary manslaughter. But that charge was later dropped after a new team reviewed evidence suggesting that the gun he was practicing with had been modified. The special prosecutor who initially helped lead the case had stepped down after her appointment was challenged on legal grounds, and the district attorney in charge of the case, Mary Carmack-Altwies, then stepped back and appointed Ms. Morrissey and Jason Lewis as new special prosecutors.The email from Mr. Shilling, the former chief of the New Mexico State Police, was sent to Ms. Morrissey, Ms. Carmack-Altwies, another member of the district attorney’s office and, improbably, to Jason Bowles, a lawyer for Ms. Gutierrez-Reed. (Mr. Shilling said he had sent the note to Mr. Bowles by mistake because he has the same first name as one of his supervisors. He called his email “unprofessional,” noting that “the victim deserved better.”)On Thursday, Mr. Bowles said in a statement that the announcement of the additional charge after 20 months of investigation with no prior notice to his client was “shocking,” and noted that it came on the heels of the state’s lead investigator “raising serious concerns about the investigation in an email.”“This stinks to high heaven,” Mr. Bowles said.Of the narcotics allegation, Mr. Bowles said in the statement that he hadn’t seen any facts or witnesses statements backing it.Mr. Bowles called the email exchange “beyond troubling” in court papers he filed Thursday afternoon to bolster his request that the case be dismissed, saying that he was concerned that he had initially been asked to erase the erroneously sent email. He asked the judge to require that Mr. Shilling and the prosecutors produce all communications between them.In her statement, Ms. Morrissey defended the integrity of law enforcement’s investigation, writing, “We disagree with Mr. Shilling’s evaluation that any gaps in the investigation conducted by the Santa Fe County Sheriff could not be cured and we are diligently working with the sheriff’s department and our own investigative team to conduct any necessary follow-up that we, as special prosecutors, deem necessary.” More

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      Prosecutor Behind ‘Rust’ Charges Steps Aside, Appointing Replacements

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      The involuntary manslaughter case against Alec Baldwin has suffered setbacks, and now the district attorney has withdrawn from the case and named two special prosecutors.The district attorney who brought involuntary manslaughter charges against Alec Baldwin in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the “Rust” film set in New Mexico is stepping away from the case, her office announced Wednesday, as she named two new special prosecutors to handle the case.The district attorney of Santa Fe County, Mary Carmack-Altwies, had been the face of the prosecution since the beginning. But in recent weeks the case has faced a couple of setbacks: Prosecutors downgraded the charges Mr. Baldwin faces after his lawyers noted that the law he was initially charged under was not passed until after the fatal shooting, and the special prosecutor who was originally named to help with the case, Andrea Reeb, decided to step down after her appointment was challenged in court.The appointment of Ms. Reeb was initially challenged by lawyers for Mr. Baldwin, who argued that it violated the New Mexico Constitution for her to serve as a special prosecutor and a New Mexico legislator at the same time. (She was also an elected member of the state’s House of Representatives.)A lawyer for Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the original armorer on the film “Rust,” who was also charged with involuntary manslaughter in the fatal Oct. 21, 2021, shooting of the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, then raised another issue.The lawyer, Jason Bowles, argued that if Ms. Carmack-Altwies — who had said she needed help prosecuting such a high-profile case — wanted to appoint a new special prosecutor, the law required her to recuse herself from the case entirely. The judge hearing the case agreed, and Ms. Carmack-Altwies was left with the choice to either hire legal help and stay on the case or step back from it and let a new special prosecutor act.She chose to step back, announcing on Wednesday that she would be appointing two New Mexico lawyers, Kari Morrissey and Jason Lewis, as special prosecutors.“My responsibility to the people of the First Judicial District is greater than any one case, which is why I have chosen to appoint a special prosecutor in the ‘Rust’ case,” Ms. Carmack-Altwies said in a statement. “Kari Morrissey and Jason Lewis will unflinchingly pursue justice in the death of Halyna Hutchins.”Now, the case will move forward without either of the prosecutors who made the decision to charge Mr. Baldwin and Ms. Gutierrez-Reed with involuntary manslaughter, and who reached a plea deal with Dave Halls, the movie’s first assistant director, who had oversight of safety on set. More

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      Prosecutors to Announce Whether They Plan Charges in ‘Rust’ Case

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      More than a year after the fatal shooting, Santa Fe County prosecutors said they would announce on Thursday whether anyone would be charged in the case.Prosecutors in New Mexico are set to announce on Thursday whether they will file criminal charges in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of “Rust,” after more than a year of investigation and delays.The district attorney’s office that serves Santa Fe County said on Wednesday that the district attorney, Mary Carmack-Altwies, and the special prosecutor appointed to investigate the case, Andrea Reeb, would announce the decision in a written statement. The office has spent more than two months weighing a charging decision after the county sheriff’s office delivered its final investigatory report.While requesting additional funding from state officials last year, the office said that up to four people — including the actor Alec Baldwin, who was holding the gun when it went off — could be charged in the shooting. The district attorney’s office said in its request that any decision to bring charges would result in high-profile and costly trials.While Ms. Carmack-Altwies made it clear in the funding request that her office had not decided whether to bring charges — “If charges are warranted,” she began one sentence — it also went into greater detail than she had in the past. “One of the possible defendants is well-known movie actor Alec Baldwin,” said one of the attached documents.The state approved more than $300,000 for the hiring of additional employees, with the possibility of more funds later on.On Oct. 21, 2021, Mr. Baldwin was positioning an old-fashioned revolver for a close-up on the set of the western when the gun discharged, killing the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and wounding the film’s director, Joel Souza. Mr. Baldwin has denied wrongdoing, asserting that he did not pull the trigger and that Ms. Hutchins was directing him where to point the gun.Central to the investigation by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office were Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the crew member in charge of the guns on the set; Dave Halls, the movie’s first assistant director, who said he inspected the gun that day before handing it to Mr. Baldwin; Seth Kenney, the movie’s primary supplier of guns and ammunition; and Sarah Zachry, the movie’s props master, who worked closely with Ms. Gutierrez-Reed. All four individuals have denied wrongdoing in interviews with investigators or through their lawyers.After the shooting, investigators found five live rounds on the set, in addition to the bullet that had been fired from the gun. The final report by the sheriff’s office did not offer any theories about how that ammunition ended up on the set. More