Alec Baldwin scores major legal victory, potential jail time drastically reduced

Actor Alec Baldwin faces a reduced prison sentence if found guilty of manslaughter after prosecutors dropped a firearms enhancement charge linked to his 2021 shooting of a woman in New Mexico.

Baldwin was holding a gun that went off in October 2021 on the set of his western Rust.

A live shell killed cameraman Galina Hutchins and wounded director Joel Souza. Baldwin claims that the gun went off on its own.

His legal team fought to have the amplification charge dropped.

Baldwin claimed that the amplification fee was not applied to him after the fatal on-set shooting.

The law states that the improvement of a firearm can only be attributed to such a charge if the weapon was “branded” during the commission of a crime that resulted in unintentional death.

On Monday, the Santa Fe County District Attorney’s office announced through a spokesman that the enhancement had been withdrawn.

The New York Times reported that press secretary Heather Brewer said firearm improvements had been discontinued to “avoid further diverting the attention of Mr. Baldwin and his attorneys from the trial.”

“The prosecution’s priority is to ensure fairness, not to provide paid hours for city attorneys,” Brewer added.

If the jurors of the jury drop the charges, the time behind bars that threatens Baldwin will be drastically reduced.
find him guilty of manslaughter.

The Times reported that under the amplification law, Baldwin faces a minimum of five years in prison if found guilty.

Now he faces a maximum of 18 months behind bars.

Baldwin stated that he was not responsible for Hutchins’ death.

“Someone put a live bullet in a gun, a bullet that shouldn’t even have been on the property,” Baldwin told ABC News just weeks after he shot Hutchins on the set of the movie.

“Someone is responsible for what happened and I can’t tell who it is, but I know it’s not me.”

The actor also claimed that he never pulled the trigger of a gun.

An FBI analysis of the firearm showed that the firearm could not have been fired without deliberate actions such as pulling the trigger.

Prosecutors also alleged that Baldwin had not taken a full and required firearms safety course prior to the film’s production.

During an abbreviated half-hour gun safety course, Baldwin was described as “distracted”, according to the district attorney’s probable cause statement.