DailyExpertNews senior legal analyst Elie Honig said the “Rust” fatal shooting case is not an obvious negligence and involves issues of fact.
First of all, Honig said, Mary Carmack-Altwies, New Mexico’s first judicial district attorney, told DailyExpertNews she doesn’t know — and “we may never know” — how live rounds got on set.
“That’s an important matter of fact. The defense attorney will one day stand before a jury and say, ‘They want you to convict my client and they can’t even tell you how those live rounds got there,'” Honey said. DailyExpertNews’s Victor Blackwell and Alisyn Camerota.
Second, the incident happened on a movie set and “most normal people don’t know what the norms are on a movie set,” he said.
So there’s a lot of reliance on the expertise of props, but even those experts have different views on the obligations of actors and crew members on set, Honig said.
“Remember, this is a criminal case. You need all 12 jurors to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. So I’m not saying there’s no chance here, but this is a very difficult case for the prosecution,” he added please.
Honig also said he was “baffled” that the district attorney decided to charge Alec Baldwin as both an actor and a producer.
“Those are completely different factual and legal scenarios,” Honig said.
“The question about a producer – that goes into what exactly Alec Baldwin’s job was, what his responsibilities were in relation to the many other directors, producers, professionals on that set – and look, sometimes people are nominal producers. .but aren’t really in charge of things in a hands-on way,” he continued.
“These are all complex matters of fact. … This is not a civil proceeding. This is a criminal proceeding. The highest burden in our legal system is on the prosecutors. They must prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt and unanimously to the jury. It is never easy, and I think it’s going to be particularly difficult here,” he added.