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    What the ‘Rust’ Jury Heard About How Live Rounds Got on a Film Set

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    The prosecution pointed to a photo of the film’s armorer, arguing she had brought the live rounds. Her lawyers tried to focus attention on the movie’s primary ammunition supplier.Ever since a real, live bullet discharged from the gun that Alec Baldwin was rehearsing with on the set of the film “Rust” in 2021, killing the cinematographer and wounding the director, one question has vexed everyone involved: How did live ammunition end up on a film set, where — all agree — it absolutely should never have been?The film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, was found guilty on Wednesday of involuntary manslaughter in the death of the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and faces up to 18 months in prison. The jury found that Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, 26, had behaved negligently by failing to check that all of the rounds she loaded into Mr. Baldwin’s revolver were dummies, which are inert rounds that look real but cannot be fired.The question of where the live ammunition came from in the first place has hung over the case from the start. The original investigation by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office did not reach a conclusion on where the live rounds had come from.During the trial, prosecutors sought to convince jurors that it was Ms. Gutierrez-Reed who was responsible for bringing the rounds onto the set. The defense asserted that Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, who did not testify, was not at fault, and tried to focus attention on the movie’s primary weapons and ammunition supplier, Seth Kenney, who took the stand and denied responsibility.Here is what emerged during the trial about the live ammunition, and where it may have come from.Ms. Gutierrez-Reed during the trial.Pool photo by Eddie MooreProsecutors zeroed in on a box of rounds from the set.When investigators arrived at the chaotic scene shortly after the shooting, on Oct. 21, 2021, Ms. Gutierrez-Reed showed a lieutenant from the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office a cart where she kept guns and ammunition and drew his attention to a box of ammunition where she said that she had retrieved the rounds she put in Mr. Baldwin’s revolver.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 Legal Question at the Center of the Alec Baldwin Criminal Case

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      The actor was told the gun he was rehearsing with on the “Rust” set, which fired and killed the cinematographer, held no live ammunition. Can he be found guilty of manslaughter?Now that a grand jury has indicted Alec Baldwin on a charge of involuntary manslaughter for the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of the film “Rust” in New Mexico in 2021, the contours of the looming legal battle are coming into focus.If the case reaches trial, the challenge prosecutors face will be convincing a jury that Mr. Baldwin was guilty of either the negligent use of a firearm or of acting with “total disregard or indifference for the safety of others” — even though investigators found he was told on the day of the shooting that the gun he was rehearsing with contained no live rounds, and even though the film set was not supposed to have any live ammunition at all.The challenge Mr. Baldwin’s defense team faces will be to explain why the gun fired. Mr. Baldwin has maintained all along that he did not pull the trigger that day as he rehearsed a scene in which he draws a revolver, saying that the gun discharged after he pulled the hammer back and released it. A forensic report commissioned by the prosecution determined that he must have pulled the trigger for the gun to go off, a finding that contributed to its decision to revive the criminal case against Mr. Baldwin.Legal experts were divided on the merits of reviving the case, noting that traditional gun safety rules — such as never pointing a functional gun toward someone — do not always apply on film sets, and that investigators found he had been assured by the film’s safety crew that the gun did not contain live ammunition.“The notion that you never point a gun at someone would sort of undo westerns for the past 100 years,” said Nancy Gertner, a retired federal judge.The outcome of the case at trial — the State of New Mexico vs. Alexander (Alec) Rae Baldwin — would hinge on how jurors view two key questions: Should Mr. Baldwin have known of the danger involved in his actions that day? And, using a term of art in criminal law, did he act with a “willful disregard for the safety of others”?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?  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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      Alec Baldwin Will Be Charged With Involuntary Manslaughter in ‘Rust’ Killing

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      A gun that Mr. Baldwin was rehearsing with went off, killing the film’s cinematographer. The armorer responsible for weapons on set also faces manslaughter charges.Silent footage shows Alec Baldwin practicing a scene with a revolver on the “Rust” movie set before shooting and killing the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins.For more than a year, the actor Alec Baldwin has tried to defend himself against the suggestion that he bore responsibility for the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of “Rust,” a low-budget western he was filming on the outskirts of Santa Fe, N.M.He told detectives he had been assured the gun he was rehearsing with that day did not contain live ammunition, sat down for an extensive television interview, sought indemnification from financial liability in the case and then sued crew members on the film, claiming that they were responsible for handing him a loaded gun.But on Thursday prosecutors said they would charge him with two counts of involuntary manslaughter in the killing of the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, 42, saying they believed he had a duty to ensure the revolver was safe to handle.“We’re trying to definitely make it clear that everybody’s equal under the law, including A-list actors like Alec Baldwin,” Andrea Reeb, a special prosecutor appointed by Santa Fe County’s district attorney to help handle the case, said in an interview. “And we also want to make sure that the safety of the film industry is addressed and things like this don’t happen again.”The film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who loaded the gun that day and was responsible for weapons on the set, will also be charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter. The film’s first assistant director, Dave Halls, who handed Mr. Baldwin the gun, agreed to a plea deal on a charge of negligent use of a deadly weapon.During an interview with detectives, Alec Baldwin said that the gun “should’ve been a cold gun with no rounds inside.”The criminal charges Mr. Baldwin faces came as a surprise to many in the film industry and were strongly disputed by his legal team. A lawyer for Mr. Baldwin, Luke Nikas, said the prosecutors’ decision “distorts Halyna Hutchins’s tragic death and represents a terrible miscarriage of justice.”“Mr. Baldwin had no reason to believe there was a live bullet in the gun — or anywhere on the movie set,” Mr. Nikas said in a statement on Thursday. “He relied on the professionals with whom he worked, who assured him the gun did not have live rounds. We will fight these charges, and we will win.”SAG-AFTRA, the union representing film, television and radio workers, said in a statement that the death of Ms. Hutchins was a “preventable” tragedy but that it was “not a failure of duty or a criminal act on the part of any performer.”“The prosecutor’s contention that an actor has a duty to ensure the functional and mechanical operation of a firearm on a production set is wrong and uninformed,” the union said. “An actor’s job is not to be a firearms or weapons expert.”Mr. Baldwin, 64, has been a household name for decades as a Hollywood leading man, a TV star who played Jack Donaghy in “30 Rock” and former President Donald J. Trump on “Saturday Night Live,” a co-host of the Oscars and the voice of the New York Philharmonic’s radio broadcasts.He has long drawn scrutiny for his offscreen behavior, which has included run-ins with paparazzi, an arrest for riding his bicycle the wrong way on Fifth Avenue, a 2018 arrest over a parking space dispute and feuds waged on social media.But he has never faced a crisis like the one he faces now.Ever since the shooting Mr. Baldwin had sought to strike a delicate balance: publicly maintaining his innocence in an effort to preserve his reputation and career while trying to stay out of legal jeopardy.He appeared on national television, where he said he had been told that the gun did not have live rounds in it, and added that he was only following directions when he pointed it at the cinematographer. “Someone is ​responsible for what happened, and I can’t say who that is, but I know it’s not me,” he said in the interview.Privately, a police report said, he had lamented to a detective that fall that “if your name becomes associated with something, nobody wants to work with you anymore — nobody.”After news of the charges spread, about two dozen reporters and photographers camped out on the sidewalk outside his Manhattan apartment, to the consternation of neighbors.If a jury found Mr. Baldwin or Ms. Gutierrez-Reed guilty, it would choose between the two manslaughter charges. The more serious one includes a firearm enhancement and a mandatory five-year sentence; the other charge carries a sentence of up to 18 months.A detective questioned Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the armorer on “Rust,” about the ammunition inside the gun that killed the movie’s cinematographer.The criminal charges against Mr. Baldwin are sure to reopen questions about safety on film sets, and who bears responsibility. The district attorney for Santa Fe County, Mary Carmack-Altwies, said in an interview that Mr. Baldwin had a duty to ensure the gun and the ammunition were properly checked and that he should never have pointed it at anyone. “You should not point a gun at someone that you’re not willing to shoot,” she said. “That goes to basic safety standards.”Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, the armorer who was responsible for the weapons on set and loaded the gun that day, told investigators she had checked the gun and all six cartridges she loaded, but she also remarked, “I wish I would’ve checked it more.”One of her lawyers, Jason Bowles, said his client was not responsible for involuntary manslaughter, calling the investigation into the case “flawed.”The shooting on Oct. 21, 2021, which also wounded the film’s director, Joel Souza, took place in a small set meant to look like a church. The film’s first assistant director, Mr. Halls, 63, took the revolver from a gray, two-tiered tray set up outside the church by Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, 25, and handed it to Mr. Baldwin, calling out “cold gun” to indicate it did not contain live ammunition, according to court papers.A lawyer for Mr. Halls, Lisa Torraco, said in a statement that the plea deal allowed him to “put this matter behind him and allow the focus of this tragedy to be on the shooting victims, their family and changing the industry so this type of accident will never happen again.”The prosecutors said they had determined it was part of film industry standards for actors to ensure that the guns they used on set were safe for them to handle, saying they had interviewed several actors who spoke to the importance of those protocols. Mr. Baldwin has pushed back on that idea in the past, saying that in his experience on film sets it was not the practice for actors to check their own guns.Ms. Reeb, the special prosecutor, who is also a Republican member of the New Mexico Legislature, said Ms. Gutierrez-Reed was also responsible for ensuring that the guns on the set did not contain live rounds, saying in an interview that she should have taken each round out of the gun and shaken them in front of the actor — a practice that helps confirm the rounds are dummies, inert cartridges used to resemble real ammunition in a film.Body camera video shows a lieutenant searching for the gun that discharged and fatally wounded a cinematographer on the “Rust” movie set.In the aftermath of the shooting, the authorities found five additional live rounds on the set, including on top of the cart where props were kept and in a belt that Mr. Baldwin was wearing as a costume piece. The investigation by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office did not answer a key question — how live ammunition ended up on a movie set — and Ms. Reeb said that aspect of the case was still unclear. “We may never answer that question,” she said.The tragedy has resulted in several lawsuits, including from crew members who have accused the production of not properly adhering to safety protocols.During interviews with the sheriff’s office, some crew members described a lack of consistent meetings devoted to on-set safety. The night before the shooting, most of the camera crew had quit over complaints about overnight lodging and other concerns; in an email to other people on set informing them he was leaving, Lane Luper, the head of the camera department, wrote that the filming of gunfight scenes was played “very fast and loose,” citing two accidental weapons discharges.A lawyer for Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, who trained on film sets with her father, a veteran Hollywood armorer named Thell Reed, had previously said she filled two roles on the “Rust” set — as armorer and props assistant — which made it difficult for her to focus fully on her job as armorer.Mr. Baldwin has maintained that he is not responsible for the shooting, saying that Ms. Hutchins had been directing him where to point the gun and that he did not pull the trigger before the gun discharged. He told investigators he had pulled the hammer back and let it go in an action that might have set it off.“I know 1,000 percent I’m not responsible for what happened to her,” Mr. Baldwin told an investigator, Detective Alexandria Hancock, in a phone call following the shooting.Ms. Carmack-Altwies, a Democrat who was elected in 2020, said an F.B.I. analysis of the gun showed “conclusively” that the trigger had been pulled.A crime scene technician took photos of Alec Baldwin on the “Rust” movie set shortly after the fatal shooting of the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins.The prosecutors said the people they intended to charge this month would not be arrested but would be expected to appear for a virtual court appearance. A judge in New Mexico will then oversee a preliminary hearing on the charges and determine whether there is probable cause to move forward.Ms. Gutierrez-Reed has also accused Seth Kenney, the primary supplier of guns and ammunition for the film, of being responsible for the shooting, alleging in a lawsuit against him and his company that the supply he sent to the set had mixed live ammunition in with dummy rounds.Mr. Kenney has said he checked all of the rounds he provided to the production to ensure they were not live, saying in a statement that handling the guns and ammunition on set was Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s responsibility.Last year, Matthew Hutchins, the widower of Ms. Hutchins, agreed to settle his wrongful death lawsuit against the “Rust” production. Under the agreement, Mr. Hutchins would become an executive producer of “Rust,” which had been set to resume filming this month. It was not immediately clear how the planned charges would affect those plans.A lawyer for Mr. Hutchins, Brian J. Panish, said in a statement that he agreed with the decision to bring criminal charges.“It is a comfort to the family that, in New Mexico, no one is above the law,” Mr. Panish said. “We support the charges, will fully cooperate with this prosecution and fervently hope the justice system works to protect the public and hold accountable those who break the law.”Brooks Barnes More

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      Matt Shultz, Cage the Elephant Singer, Arrested on Weapons Charges

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      Mr. Shultz, 39, was seen pulling a gun out of his pocket in a public restroom at a Manhattan hotel, the authorities said.Matt Shultz, the lead singer of the indie rock band Cage the Elephant, was arrested at a Manhattan hotel on Thursday on weapons charges, law enforcement officials said.Mr. Shultz, 39, was arrested on Thursday morning after a Bowery Hotel employee had seen him pull a gun from his pants pocket in one of the hotel’s public restrooms, according to a criminal complaint.Mr. Shultz, of Nashville, appeared intoxicated, according to the Manhattan district attorney’s office.Police officers responded to a 911 call, obtained a search warrant and found two loaded firearms — a .45-caliber Smith & Wesson pistol and a .45-caliber Sig Sauer pistol — in a bag in Mr. Shultz’s hotel room, according to court records and the prosecutor’s office.Officers also found 11 Polaroid photos of the guns, some showing a hand pointing to the firearms, and six handwritten notes, the prosecutor’s office said. A message on one of the notes read, in substance, “I will defend myself if I am attacked,” according to the prosecutor’s office.Mr. Shultz faces multiple counts of weapons possession charges, according to court records. He is scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday. His lawyer, Sanford Talkin, declined to comment on Sunday. It was not immediately clear if Mr. Shultz had been released on bail, which was set at $30,000.Cage the Elephant, which was formed in 2006 in Bowling Green, Ky., is known for its psychedelic sound, distinct echoes of past rock eras and Mr. Shultz’s warbling, sometimes abrasive voice.The band released its first album in 2008, and has won the Grammy Award for best rock album twice, most recently in 2020 for “Social Cues.” It won its first Grammy in 2015 for its album “Tell Me I’m Pretty.”The band’s 2011 album, “Thank You Happy Birthday,” debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, and the album’s lead single, “Shake Me Down,” was No. 1 on Billboard’s Rock Songs and Alternative Songs charts, according to the Grammy Awards.Before the band was established, Mr. Shultz had worked as a plumber and in a sandwich bar, according to the Grammy Awards. More

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      YoungBoy Never Broke Again Found Not Guilty in Federal Gun Case

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      Lawyers for the rapper argued that he did not know the weapon was in his car when he was pulled over and arrested on a separate warrant in California last year.The chart-topping 22-year-old rapper YoungBoy Never Broke Again, born Kentrell D. Gaulden, was found not guilty on Friday of possessing a firearm and ammunition as a felon, concluding one of the two federal gun trials he had been facing.A jury in Los Angeles reached its verdict after about two hours on its second day of deliberations. Mr. Gaulden, who is known to fans as NBA YoungBoy or YB, faced up to 10 years in prison in the case.The gun possession charge in California stemmed from YoungBoy’s March 2021 arrest in the Los Angeles area on a separate federal gun possession warrant from an earlier incident in the rapper’s home state of Louisiana. In September 2020, YoungBoy was among 16 people accused of possessing guns and drugs at a video shoot in Baton Rouge. His lawyers have said none of the contraband was in his possession.Prosecutors in the Central District of California said that upon attempting to execute the warrant in that case, YoungBoy initially seemed to cooperate, pulling over his Mercedes Maybach before taking off again and leading officers on a “high-speed chase.” After the rapper fled on foot, police found an FNX .45 caliber pistol and ammunition behind the front passenger’s seat, along with cash and jewelry.Lawyers for YoungBoy argued that the rapper was unaware of his outstanding federal warrant at the time and panicked when armed officers approached his vehicle, leading him to take off. He did not know the weapon was in the car, they said, and no usable fingerprints or DNA tied YoungBoy to the gun.Prosecutors had sought to link the rapper to the weapon using a photo and video from social media of YoungBoy handling “a gold and tan gun that appeared identical to the firearm recovered from his car,” according to court records. The photo was taken at the same Philadelphia shop that had sold YoungBoy the jewelry also found in the car, they argued. Lawyers for the rapper said the gun was identical to an airsoft replica and could not be confirmed to be the same weapon.“We believe the evidence presented in this case supported the charges brought by the grand jury,” Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, said in a statement. “While we are disappointed with the verdict, we respect the jury’s decision.”As the trial started on Tuesday, the judge in the case, R. Gary Klausner, ruled to exclude lyrics from three YoungBoy songs from being used in court. Prosecutors had said that the tracks — “Gunsmoke,” “Life Support” and “Lonely Child” — referred “to an individual connected to the purchaser of the gun, the gun model found in his car, and the jewelry maker of the jewelry found next to the gun.”But lawyers for the rapper successfully argued that the “hardcore” and “highly inflammatory” rap lyrics would be prejudicial and were not directly relevant, noting that the song mentioning an FN pistol was released before the FN gun seized from the Maybach was purchased.“It’s for entertainment,” they wrote in a court filing. “It is not an admission of other bad acts but it does paint the rappers in a bad light and the jury may infer from the song that Mr. Gaulden is a violent person and take those feelings with them into the deliberation room.”The rapper’s lawyers added: “The real issues are: 1) whether he knew the gun was inside of the car and 2) whether he intended to possess it. It’s a relatively simple case.”Known for his raw reality rap, prolific output and obsessive online fan base, YoungBoy is among the most-streamed artists in the United States so far this year, competing with the likes of Drake and Taylor Swift. Since signing a $2 million deal with Atlantic Records in 2016, he has frequently topped the Billboard album chart — hitting No. 1 with four releases in less than two years — but continues to exist largely outside the mainstream entertainment business, owing in part to his ongoing legal issues.In 2017, YoungBoy pleaded guilty to aggravated assault with a firearm and received a suspended 10-year prison sentence, plus probation, stemming from his role in a nonfatal drive-by shooting for which he was originally charged with attempted first-degree murder. In 2019, following subsequent arrests, including for a domestic violence incident in which he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery, the rapper was sentenced to 90 days in jail.Since October, when he was granted a $500,000 bond in the federal gun cases, YoungBoy has lived under home confinement in Utah, where he has continued to record and release music.YoungBoy’s additional federal gun case in Louisiana is ongoing. His lawyers have argued that he was unfairly targeted, highlighting law enforcement’s name for one of its operations: Never Free Again, “an obvious take off on Gaulden’s highly successful music and marketing brand.” The rapper’s legal team has successfully suppressed video evidence in the case that it said was unconstitutionally obtained.The rapper’s arrest in Los Angeles last year, his lawyers said, was a “massive and wildly unnecessary militaristic display of force and intimidation.” More

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      ‘Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down’ Review: A New Mission

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      This documentary from the directors of “RBG” offers a window into the life of the former Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords after she survived a bullet wound to the head.In 2011, Gabrielle Giffords, then a Democratic congresswoman, was hosting a public meet-and-greet outside a Safeway supermarket in Arizona when a gunman opened fire into the gathering, killing six people and wounding many more. Giffords suffered a bullet to the head that shattered her skull and wreaked havoc on the left side of her brain. She now struggles with aphasia, a condition that interferes with the expression of language.The documentary “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down” offers a sentimental tour of the former congresswoman’s recovery process and her efforts to prevent gun violence in the years following the shooting. The film also provides a window into Giffords’s marriage to Senator Mark Kelly, a former space shuttle pilot with NASA. Kelly was a pillar of support for Giffords during her rehabilitation, and in 2020 he picked up the thread of her work in politics when he won a special election to represent Arizona in the Senate.Gun control is an urgent issue, and the directors Betsy West and Julie Cohen (“RBG”) scored big time with a frank talking-head interview with former President Barack Obama, who discusses the nation’s need for gun safety laws. At the same time, the film is not shy about positioning Giffords’s advocacy work alongside an assessment of her views on firearms more broadly, including that she and her husband are gun owners.But by and large, this is a human interest story. We begin amid painful home video clips of Giffords in the hospital following the attack. We end with triumphant footage of her and Kelly giving speeches onstage. Even during more analytic or crusading sections, the documentary’s mood never strays from inspirational.Gabby Giffords Won’t Back DownRated PG-13. The horrors of gun violence. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Nipsey Hussle Murder Trial: What to Know

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      More than three years after the Los Angeles rapper was shot and killed, the trial of Eric Holder Jr., the accused gunman, is finally underway.More than three years after the fatal shooting of the rapper Nipsey Hussle, a proudly local Los Angeles artist whose killing reverberated far beyond the world of West Coast hip-hop, the trial of the accused gunman, Eric R. Holder Jr., is finally underway. Jury selection in the case, which had been repeatedly delayed because of the Covid-19 pandemic, began on June 2. Opening arguments are expected to start this week, with the trial likely to last about four weeks.Hussle, whose real name was Ermias Asghedom, was shot and killed on March 31, 2019, outside a clothing store he owned in South Los Angeles, with the police soon attributing the attack to a personal dispute. Two days after the shooting, which also wounded two bystanders, Mr. Holder, then 29, was arrested and charged with murder, attempted murder and possession of a firearm by a felon. He pleaded not guilty and has since been held in lieu of $6.5 million bail.According to court records, Los Angeles County prosecutors plan to argue that Mr. Holder and the 33-year-old Hussle, two old acquaintances who belonged to the same street gang, had a chance encounter in a strip mall parking lot, during which the rapper mentioned neighborhood rumors that Mr. Holder had cooperated with law enforcement — “a very serious offense” in the gang world. Minutes later, prosecutors say, Mr. Holder returned with two handguns and began firing repeatedly. Here is what else to know about the case.Who was Nipsey Hussle?A workmanlike rapper with underground credentials and an A-list network of supporters, Hussle was more than 15 years into his music career when he released his proper debut album in 2018. Before the Grammy-nominated “Victory Lap,” Hussle had built a career that was richer in industry respect and good will than hit records, though he collaborated widely with artists like Snoop Dogg, Drake and Rick Ross. Known for his independent business ethos and novel marketing ideas, like the limited-edition $100 mixtape “Crenshaw,” Hussle had partnered with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation management company as he eyed a move toward the mainstream.A self-proclaimed member of the Rollin’ 60s Crips, Hussle had also made a name for himself as a community ambassador and an entrepreneur in his South Los Angeles neighborhood. While seeking to stem gang violence in the area, he preached Black empowerment through business ownership, reinvesting his earnings as a musician in the place where he grew up.With a group of backers, Hussle had bought the strip mall at the corner of Crenshaw Boulevard and Slauson Avenue that housed his Marathon clothing store, while also helping to open a nearby co-working space dedicated to increasing diversity in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.At the same time, even as Hussle was praised after his death as an inspirational neighborhood fixture and a peacemaker, his properties were the subject of a longstanding investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department and the city attorney’s office, which considered the area a Rollin’ 60s stronghold.Some 20,000 people attended Hussle’s public memorial at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, where a statement from President Barack Obama highlighted the rapper’s life as “a legacy worth celebrating.”After his killing in 2019, mourners held a vigil ouside his Marathon clothing store.Alex Welsh for The New York TimesWhat happened on the day of the shooting?That Sunday afternoon, according to grand jury transcripts, Hussle arrived at the shopping plaza for an unannounced visit, as he often did. While catching up with neighborhood friends and employees in the parking lot in front of his Marathon store, Hussle spent about half an hour signing autographs and posing for photos with fans.At the same time, a woman Mr. Holder was casually dating was driving him around the area just to hang out, the woman testified to the grand jury in 2019. As they stopped to get something to eat, the woman noticed Hussle outside the store and remarked in passing that he looked handsome, she said. Mr. Holder did not indicate that he knew the rapper, but approached him for a brief conversation after ordering chili cheese fries at a nearby burger place while the woman waited in the car.“Apparently the conversation had something to do with Mr. Asghedom telling Mr. Holder that word on the street was that Mr. Holder was snitching,” John McKinney, the Los Angeles County deputy district attorney, told the grand jury, citing witnesses. “The conversation wasn’t particularly intense, it wasn’t particularly belligerent, and it lasted for about four minutes.”Hussle, the witnesses said, seemed to be looking out for Mr. Holder, telling him he needed to address the rumors. When Mr. Holder asked Hussle and those around him if they had heard the music he had been working on, they said they had not. As the men finished speaking, the woman driving Mr. Holder approached Hussle for a selfie, which she soon posted to Facebook.Upon returning to the car, Mr. Holder told the woman to pull into another nearby parking lot so he could eat his fries, she said. After a few bites, he loaded a 9-millimeter pistol, she testified, and walked back toward Hussle’s store. According to witnesses, Mr. Holder confronted the rapper and said, “You’re through” as he opened fire with a gun in each hand, hitting Hussle at least 10 times and then kicking him twice in the head.“You got me,” Hussle said, according to court testimony. Two other men, Kerry Lathan and Shermi Villanueva, were wounded by the gunfire.How was Eric Holder identified as the suspect?Recognized in the neighborhood as another member of the Rollin’ 60s Crips, Mr. Holder was better known by his nickname, a descriptive epithet. Surveillance footage captured the shooting, in addition to the car he used to flee the scene, and the police soon publicized the information. Upon seeing her vehicle on the news, the woman who had been with Mr. Holder submitted to a five-hour interview with police officers, along with searches of her car and her mother’s home, where Mr. Holder had spent the night of the shooting before moving to hide out at a Motel 6.The woman later testified that she had heard the gunshots but was confused about what had occurred until she saw coverage of Hussle’s death online. When Mr. Holder first returned to the car, she recalled, “He’s like, ‘Drive, drive, before I slap you.’” The woman declined to press him on the specifics of what happened out of fear, she said.That Tuesday, two days after the shooting, Mr. Holder was arrested without incident in Bellflower, Calif. The murder weapons were never found.The woman, whose identity has been kept secret to protect her from threats and harassment, later agreed to immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testimony at trial. She is expected to be among the prosecution’s key witnesses.What is Mr. Holder’s defense?Mr. Holder was originally represented by Chris Darden, a lawyer perhaps best known as one of the prosecutors in the 1995 trial of O.J. Simpson. But Mr. Darden soon withdrew from the case, citing death threats against his family. Instead, Mr. Holder will be represented at trial by a public defender, Aaron Jansen, who said in an email that he plans to argue that the case was “overcharged.”“Mr. Eric Holder, Jr. should not have been charged with First Degree Premeditated Deliberate murder in the unfortunate death of Mr. Asghedom,” Mr. Jansen wrote. “Similarly,” Mr. Jansen added, he should not have been “charged with First Degree Attempted Murders of Mr. Lathan and Mr. Villanueva. Mr. Holder, Jr. did not know either man, had no beef with them, and certainly did not have the intent to kill either gentleman.”The lawyer has also alluded to Mr. Holder’s struggles with mental health, noting that the defendant was on a high dosage of medication and had been treated with electroshock therapy “as a last resort to help him.” Whether Mr. Holder will testify, the lawyer said, is his client’s decision. He faces life in prison. More

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      Naomi Judd Died of a Self-Inflicted Gunshot Wound, Her Daughter Says

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      The actress Ashley Judd said in a television interview on Thursday that her mother was suffering from mental illness when she died last month.When Naomi Judd, the Grammy-winning country music singer, died last month, her daughter Ashley Judd said that she had lost her mother to the “disease of mental illness.” On Thursday, Ms. Judd was more candid, saying in a television interview that her mother had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at her home in Tennessee, and encouraging people who are distressed to seek help.Ms. Judd, an actress, told Diane Sawyer on “Good Morning America” that she was speaking out about her mother’s death because her family wanted to share the information before it became “public without our control.”“We’re aware that although grieving the loss of a wife and a mother, we are, in an uncanny way, a public family,” Ms. Judd said. “So that’s really the impetus for this timing. Otherwise, it’s obviously way too soon. So that’s important for us to say up front.”Naomi Judd and her other daughter, Wynonna Judd, dominated the country music charts in the 1980s as the mother-daughter duo the Judds. Naomi Judd, 76, died on April 30, a day before the duo was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.In the interview on Thursday, Ashley Judd said she was visiting her mother at her home outside Nashville when she died. Ms. Judd said she went outside to greet a friend of her mother’s who had stopped by, and when she went upstairs to tell her mother that the friend had arrived, she found her mother dead.“Mother used a firearm,” Ms. Judd said. “That’s the piece of information that we are very uncomfortable sharing, but understand that we’re in a position that if we don’t say it, someone else is going to.”Ashley Judd, left, joined her sister, Wynonna Judd, as the Judds were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame on May 1, a day after Naomi Judd’s death.Wade Payne/Invision/Associated PressSuicides have historically accounted for a majority of gun deaths in the United States.In 2020, 53 percent of suicides involved firearms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Gun deaths reached the highest number ever recorded in the United States in 2020, when more than 24,000 people died by gun-related suicide and more than 19,350 people died by gun-related homicide.Ms. Judd said that she had suffered “grief and trauma” since her mother’s death, and that it was important to distinguish her mother from her mental illness.“Mom was a brilliant conversationalist, she was a star, she was an underrated songwriter,” Ms. Judd said. “And she was someone who suffered from mental illness, you know, and had a lot of trouble getting off the sofa, except to go into town every day to the Cheesecake Factory, where all the staff knew and loved her.”Naomi Judd was born in Ashland, a coal-mining town in northeastern Kentucky, and lived in California before moving to Nashville in 1979, as a single mother with two daughters.Ms. Judd supported her family by working as a nurse while pursuing a music career with Wynonna. Their break came in 1983, when Ms. Judd cared for a patient who turned out to be the daughter of an executive at RCA Records. A record deal, nine Country Music Association Awards, five Grammys and 14 No. 1 hits followed.Ashley Judd said in the interview that her mother was most alive when she was performing.“She was very isolated in many ways because of the disease,” Ms. Judd said. “And yet there were a lot of people who showed up for her over the years, not just me.”Ms. Judd encouraged people in distress to seek help and cited resources, including the national suicide hotline and the National Alliance for Mental Illness, a mental health organization that also has a hotline.“And so I want to be very careful when we talk about this today,” Ms. Judd said, “that for anyone who is having those ideas or those impulses, you know, to talk to someone, to share, to be open, to be vulnerable.”If you are having thoughts of suicide, in the United States call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 (TALK) or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. Go here for resources outside the United States. More