Monday the Santa Fe District Attorney’s Office said it is dropping the gun enhancement charge initally brought against Alec Balwdwin following the Oct. 2021 fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of “Rust.” The crime would have carried a five-year sentence if he had been convicted.
Baldwin still faces an involuntary manslaughter charge, however, if convicted, that crime would carry a lesser sentence of 18 months.
“In order to avoid further litigious distractions by Mr. Baldwin and his attorneys, the District Attorney and the special prosecutor have removed the firearm enhancement to the involuntary manslaughter charges in the death of Halyna Hutchins on the ‘Rust’ film set,” Santa Fe District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies said in a statement. “The prosecution’s priority is securing justice, not securing billable hours for big-city attorneys.”
The DA also dropped the charge against the set’s armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who faces the same involuntary manslaughter charge as Baldwin.
In a Feb. 10 motion, the actor’s team argued the enhancement was “unconstitutional” since it didn’t apply at the time of the shooting writing. The incident occurred October 2021, but the current version of the law did not take effect until May 2022.
“The prosecutors committed a basic legal error by charging Mr. Baldwin under a version of the firearm-enhancement statute that did not exist on the date of the accident,” the filing read.
Baldwin and Gutierrez-Reed are scheduled to be in court Feb. 24.
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