Exactly as we told readers about a day or two after this happened, the guilty party was found so by a jury in about two hours of deliberations. This could have happened two years ago, without anyone in NM law enforcement or prosecution even breaking a sweat. Which begs the question of how they couldn't figure this out then, and go to trial with the obvious answer a foregone conclusion. [Hint: Because BFEgypt D.A.s wanted to stick it to a big-name actor, to "make their bones", whether he was guilty or not. Johnny Depp trial watchers, stop me if you've Amber Heard this one.]
The bigger crime is noted above: Halyna Hutchins is dead forever, in a tragedy that was completely avoidable with any two brain cells, if only they'd been used; but this incompetent crackhead is looking at only 18 months, max. Only if she gets the maximum, serves every day, and gets punched in the face and beaten to a pulp daily by the other prisoners, does this approach anything like justice. Even then, it's probably too light a sentence.
Her cohort, serial on-set weapons fuck-up and now-retired-for-life 2d A.D. Dave Halls (who couldn't get a job making rubber dog poop commercials in Hong Kong anyways after this incident), scored a sweetheart plea deal with the D.A. and walked away otherwise unscathed after pleading his total criminal incompetence and dereliction as well, admitting he didn't do anything he was supposed to do as Reed's assistant, including making sure Baldwin's gun was harmless and loaded only with harmless dummy rounds, which he's already admitted in open court he didn't do.
The two of them should both be spending several years in prison for this, minimum. But won't, because the Albuquerque * {my mistake} Bumfuckistan D.A. makes Halls and Gutierrez-Reed look like seasoned professionals at their jobs by contrast with the assclowns prosecuting crimes in New Mexico.
So, with the two people solely and entirely responsible - actually, as well as by custom, practice, and black-letter rules - for ensuring what happened should never happen, and found not just actually but legally and entirely criminally negligent at their jobs, the D.A. still wants to proceed with trying to assign guilt on real-life fucktard Baldwin, apparently for being an actor on set with a prop weapon, which the script for the scene being rehearsed called for him to point and fire (with blanks) directly at the camera. (For Common Core grads, that's called doing your job.) If he'd been twirling guns and pointing them at crew members at the craft service table, there'd be an argument for gross negligence. But when you're handed what you're loudly and clearly told is a "cold (i.e. unloaded) gun", by the people in charge of ensuring that's exactly what it is, in order to rehearse a scene where you draw it, point right at the camera, and fire, and rehearsing doing that, alleging anything but being an actor doing his job is going to be a tough row to hoe.
Short of demonstrating his knowing complicity and deliberate direction of the negligence of Reed and Halls, or proving he brought and loaded the live rounds himself, which not even the tinfoil conspiracy theorists have yet attempted, the only way for the D.A.'s office to get there from here is via a gross miscarriage of justice. Which seems to be their exact intent, with the single-mindedness of Captain Ahab.
Either way, it's a win-win: either justice wins, or Baldwin goes to prison. I come down on the former choice being the much better outcome, but I'm not unsympathetic to those who'd like to see Baldwin taken down for being such a loudmouthed ignorant world-class anti-gun asshole for all those years. Other than that whole "innocent people shouldn't go to prison" thingie. You do you, and I'll do me, and we'll see who sleeps better at night. Let's hope none of us have to see how you feel when an outspoken pro-gun actor has a similar case someday*, and you find yourself having gajillions of anti-gun Leftards making your case for you. Like. They. Will. The death involved isn't worth the "I told you so" for anyone.
When a production hires people to do a job, and they knowingly don't just shirk it, but in fact knowingly and deliberately violate virtually every single written rule and regulation for firearms and ammunition on set, and then hand a live loaded weapon to an actor after telling the entire crew it's harmless, finding the guy they handed it to guilty is like blaming the Chief Engineer in the engine room of the Titanic for the ship's sinking.
Given the unmitigated jackassery since the incident by NM officialdom, nothing would surprise us at this point, other than them finally having the sense to drop the case, declare victory, and call it a day.
*(What...? You thought no one working with guns in Hollywood would set up someone on "our" side to get tit-for-tat if Baldwin goes down? They're setting themselves on fire, literally, FFS. Re-think your premises, and tell me if you'd rather live in Rule Of Law Land, or Kangaroo Court Partisanville. Robbespierre or Pol Pot v2.0 awaits your decision. Howzat working out for you with POTUS 45...? Asking for a few hundred million friends and neighbors.)
