Alec Baldwin was indicted on charges of involuntary manslaughter for a second time in connection with the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of his movie Rust.
Us Weekly confirmed the news on Friday, January 19, more than two years after Hutchins died at the age of 42 in October 2021 after Baldwin fired a prop gun on set, which was loaded with real bullets.
“We look forward to our day in court,” Baldwin’s attorneys, Luke Nikas and Alex Spiro, said in a statement to Us. If convicted, Baldwin, 65, faces up to 18 months in prison.
Initially, Baldwin was charged with involuntary manslaughter in January 2023 and pleaded not guilty the following month. The charges were ultimately dropped in April of that year.
“We are pleased with the decision to dismiss the case against Alec Baldwin and we encourage a proper investigation into the facts and circumstances of this tragic accident,” Nikas and Spiro said in a statement at the time.
Baldwin has maintained his innocence in the aftermath of the October 2021 incident, even though he was holding the weapon that killed Hutchins.
“The trigger wasn’t pulled. I didn’t pull the trigger. I would never point a gun at anyone and pull the trigger at them. Never,” Baldwin told George Stephanopoulos in a December 2021 interview. “I have no idea [how a bullet got in there]. Someone put a live bullet in a gun. A bullet that wasn’t even supposed to be on the property.”
Following an independent investigation into the gun itself, it was reported in August 2023 that the manslaughter charges against Baldwin could be refiled. The results of the investigation, headed by special prosecutors Kari Morrissey and Jason Lewis, showed that the gun had not malfunctioned and the trigger had to have been pulled in order for the weapon to fire.
“The fired evidence cartridge is the consequence of a normal hammer fall from the fully cocked position of the hammer,” the court report filed by the Forensic Science Services of Arizona stated at the time. (The report is part of the defense against Rust armorer Gutierrez Reed, who pleaded not guilty to charges of involuntary manslaughter and tampering with the weapon in August 2023.)
Following Hutchins’ death, Baldwin was also named in a February 2022 wrongful death lawsuit filed on behalf of her husband, Matthew Hutchins, and their son. An undisclosed settlement was reached by October of that year.
