Ice Breaks Under Hollywood Favorite

I just found out Alec Baldwin will be charged with involuntary manslaughter in the killing of Halyna Hutchins. This does not surprise me at all. I wrote about it a long time ago here, and I quoted the applicable law. I also discussed fundamental principles of firearms handling which are relevant to negligence, which is an element of involuntary manslaughter.

Every crime has a list of elements. An element is something you have to do in order to be guilty of the crime. Involuntary manslaughter is what they charge you with when your negligence kills someone, so negligence is an element.

Here is how New Mexico’s Supreme Court defines involuntary manslaughter:

All that it is necessary to establish for involuntary manslaughter by the use of a loaded firearm is that a defendant had in his hands a gun which at some time had been loaded and that he handled it, whether drunk, drinking or sober, without due caution and circumspection and that death resulted.

“Without due caution and circumspection.” Negligently.

How is negligence itself defined in a particular case, beyond the general definition? It’s not necessarily defined by laws or court rulings. It may be defined by common sense. It may be defined by rules and practices of everyday activities.

In Baldwin’s case, we have to look at the rules surrounding firearms use. Those rules prove his negligence. Every firearm user is obligated to follow them, even though they are not laws.

When someone hands you a gun, you open the chamber and look inside. You do this even if they just did the same thing in front of you. After that, regardless, you tread it as though it were loaded. You make sure you don’t touch the trigger unless you’re shooting, you don’t point the gun at anything you don’t want to shoot, and you make sure nothing you don’t want to shoot is in the bullet’s potential path.

While rehearsing for his film, Alec Baldwin 1) didn’t check the chamber, 2) put his finger on the trigger (and pulled it), 3) pointed the gun at someone he did not want to shoot, and 4) didn’t make sure nothing important was in the potential path of a round. As a result, he fired unintentionally, he hit a cinematographer, and he also hit the director, who was standing behind her.

The rules about not pointing at anything you don’t want to shoot and making sure nothing important is in the bullet’s potential path aren’t all that distinct. Not pointing at anything you don’t want to shoot, and making sure nothing you don’t want to shoot is downrange, are almost the same thing, but the latter concept is intended to apply to things behind your target. It’s primarily about things like shooting a rifle at an animal and hitting property or a person off in the distance. It also applies to things that are not far behind whatever you shoot at, like the director.

Baldwin didn’t do what every gun user is supposed to know he is supposed to do. That makes him negligent. That makes him guilty. If he didn’t know the rules, he was negligent because he didn’t learn. If he knew the rules, he was negligent because he didn’t obey them.

Ordinarily, it’s foolish to make decisions about a person’s guilt without seeing all the evidence, but sometimes the available evidence stands on its own and can’t be overcome. This is such a case.

I’m not surprised the set armorer and a producer were also charged with crimes. I discussed that here in 2021. It’s very clear that anyone whose actions put a loaded gun in an actor’s hand is guilty of something. I was surprised to see the people who supposedly used the gun for target practice were not charged, but the report says the target practice claim was untrue.

Baldwin’s post-shooting behavior was not good. He was very arrogant. He tried to throw his employees to the wolves, in the bizarre hope professional investigators and prosecutors would take the bait. They did, and then they took him, too. You can’t just tell a prosecutor to go away because someone else did it. They don’t let defendants tell them what to do. It’s amazing that Baldwin’s attorneys let him make crazy remarks and argue with people. Unless they’re incompetent, they must have advised him to shut up.

What he was really saying was this: “Don’t arrest me. Please don’t arrest me. Maybe if I keep arguing, you won’t arrest me.” His posts were aimed at the police and prosecutors. He hoped they would read them and let him go. Law enforcement doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t respond to transparently manipulative Internet tweets.

Now his Twitter account is private. That suggests he hasn’t learned. Saying unwise things to a smaller audience isn’t going to keep other people from seeing them. Anyone can cut and paste, and prosecutors can get private tweets if they want. His “protected” tweets have been republished from time to time. Someone has surely saved all of them.

So what will happen to him?

If there are technical errors in the case, or if he gets a really good jury, he’ll walk. If not, he will be convicted.

His lawyers will do their best to pick a sympathetic jury. Defiant juries turn murderers loose every day. O.J. Simpson murdered two people, was proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and went home acquitted because a jury of black women wanted it that way. Maybe Baldwin’s lawyers will figure out which potential jurors like Baldwin.

They will hire experts to help them pick jurors. This case will be a windfall for experts of all sorts. Baldwin will not hesitate to get out the checkbook.

As for errors, Bill Cosby is definitely a rapist, but he is home now because of a technicality. If your case is sufficiently tainted, what you actually did is irrelevant.

Baldwin should have kept quiet. He should not have antagonized people in public after the shooting. It will make him look bad if he is sentenced, and it will also make this whole affair much more humiliating than it had to be. His enemies will be dancing on his prostrate body for at least the next two years.

He reminds me of Michael Avenatti, the Trump-hating lawyer who disappeared into the black void of the federal prison system not long ago. He was brash and self-righteous even after convictions started dropping.

He was still tweeting two days after his last sentencing. That is amazing. Federal prison–real federal prison–is like hell. It’s a Jonah fish that swallows you alive. Smart people drop their attitudes when they land in federal prison. It’s a subtle clue your pride is not helping you.

God punishes the proud and self-righteous, sooner or later. When it happens during this life, the punishments generally escalate with time. If you repent, things start to get better.

There are many people who double down with punishment. The harsher the punishment, the worse they get. There is no hope for those people. There is no limit to the suffering God will let them experience. I have no doubt there are people cursing God and saying he wronged them, even as they burn in hell. People are just that crazy. They are just that stubborn and dishonest.

That’s why hell exists. It’s for people who don’t listen.

What kind of sentence will Baldwin get? No idea. I assume it’s impossible for a healthy man to avoid prison time in a manslaughter case in New Mexico, but assumptions aren’t worth much. Right now, lawyers who like appearing on TV are looking for the answer so they will have something to say tonight. They will let us know. All I know is that the maximum is 18 months.

I just checked, and apparently, he is looking at a 5-year minimum because a gun was involved. The DA says so. Does that mean anything? Not in Florida. My last pastor raped a girl over and over and got two years, which was nothing like the mandatory minimum. A close relative was convicted of felony fleeing and evading, which carries a mandatory minimum, and she got probation. Maybe New Mexico is like Florida.

My guess is that he’ll get whatever minimums apply, at the very least, because this is a high-profile case. If my last pastor had been on the news and people had followed the trial, I think the judge would have applied the law correctly in order to avoid a backlash.

I don’t like Alec Baldwin because he’s a nasty person, but I don’t want to see him go to prison. He’s not a career criminal. He’s not going to shoot anyone else; I think we can be sure of that. I have prayed for him. In my mind, a dislike for an obnoxious person doesn’t justify wishing that person will go to prison.

I have done stupid things, myself. I have done things that could have killed people. You have, too. Own a car? The only big difference between Alec Baldwin and me is that the egregious risks I took didn’t produce disasters. I could have been in his shoes.

I have been arrogant. I have been nasty. It makes no sense to hope for mercy for myself and wish prison on someone else who is annoying but not really a major problem for the world.

It’s not like he’s going to go out and commit a slew of involuntary crimes.

I do think he needed to be charged. He needed to be alerted to his issues with pride.

Maybe they’ll offer him a juicy plea. I think I would jump for it if I were him. If he is sentenced at age 67, he could be looking at release at the age of 73, not counting time off for good behavior. The web seems to say he could be out by 70. That’s not great for an old man who has young children. In his situation, I think I’d be happy with anything under a year.

It may be that the only person who is really surprised today is Alec Baldwin. Someone should have sat him down after the shooting and told him this was coming.

They probably did.

I’ll keep praying things go as well as they can for him.