Baldwin was responsible for participating in the safety training which he ignored. Whether the safety training was sufficient to prevent what happened is another matter.
The film industry is not immune to safety standards and that includes actors. There are generally accepted safety protocols for handling a weapon and those were not met.
None of that has anything to do with what you quoted.
He was a Producer in the film.
But he wasn’t prosecuted in this capacity, under that NM manslaughter law it would be really hard to prosecute him as the guy in charge who knowingly ran an obviously dangerous workplace that was gonna kill someone one day (I don’t know if that was the case here, AFAIK producers who are big name actors have basically nothing to with actually running the film set). It was really easy to prosecute him as the poor chump who accidentally screwed up and got someone killed.
That’s my problem with this case. If he’d been a regular line worker instead of a millionaire celebrity he’d have been locked up, without a second thought to the whether the people who ran the place should have not set it up so some guy screwing up would kill someone (and that’s ignoring all the blatant prosecutorial malpractice that an ordinary guy without an expensive lawyer would have had no chance of avoiding)
No, he did not.
Not in the sense people think of- Hollywood is kinda weird*. Rust* had something like a dozen “producers”. Baldwins name was used as he is famous. I know Hollywood is weird, but if you dont understand it- and i only sorta kinda do (I have a IMDB credit or two)- then dont judge.
| Alec Baldwin | … | producer |
|---|---|---|
| Kc Brandenstein | … | co-producer |
| Matt DelPiano | … | producer |
| Tyler Gould | … | executive producer |
| Matthew Helderman | … | executive producer |
| Grant Hill | … | producer |
| Matthew Hutchins | … | executive producer |
| Nathan Klingher | … | producer |
| Anjul Nigam | … | producer |
| Gabrielle Pickle | … | line producer |
| Ryan Donnell Smith | … | producer |
| Luke Taylor | … | executive producer |
| Ryan Winterstern | … | producer |
If he was a no-name line worker I don’t think he would have ever been charged in the first place, much less locked up.
OSHA’s determination was that he was a producer only in terms of casting and script changes. He had no authority; there were no people that reported to him.
Though I’d have been fine if Baldwin and all those other producers, had been prosecuted as they were responsible for running a blatantly dangerous workplace where live rounds were routinely mixed up with dummy rounds used in shoots (and where the armorer was clearly not up to the task, and only hired as she was cheap). Whatever the situation in practice I am sure they signed contracts saying they were legally responsible for the production of the film.
Of course that would be an incredibly hard case to prove and beyond the capability of a small New Mexico DA
Baldwin was not involved in running that workplace. He was not that kind of producer.
Obviously that is not true-“routinely”?- but it did happen once.
Correct.
We have no idea if it’s true. That’s my point the higher ups were never prosecuted so we don’t know. We know it happened at least twice (there was another earlier incident IIRC). The system is set up to make it easy to prosecute the poor chump at the bottom who’s screw up killed someone not the guy who decides it would save him a few bucks to run a workplace that is blatantly unsafe and going kill someone the first time someone screws up.
It just so happens in this case the poor chump at the bottom is also a rich famous Hollywood actor who is also a producer.
My thoughts exactly. FWIW, I still think the Baldwin prosecution (even in his role as “the poor chump”) had merit in principle. And I am ever so pissed that the special prosecutor botched it and got the case thrown out in what must be the dumbest way possible.
Well, you stated it.