It’s a question that brings us to the trial of actor Alec Baldwin, which began today, nearly three years after he shot and killed a woman on a movie set outside Sante Fe. The charge is involuntary manslaughter, not murder; Baldwin, who fired the reproduction revolver that killed Rust’s cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, had been told the weapon wasn’t loaded. But through some combination of negligence and incompetence, there was one real bullet in the gun’s chamber.
What happened that day, in October 2021, was a horrible tragedy, but also unambiguously an accident—and yet, Baldwin has been subjected to an unusually zealous prosecution by New Mexico authorities. It’s a case that illuminates just how complex things can get when criminal justice intersects with a person’s celebrity status.
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