The transcript of the interview is available here.
https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts...ing-transcript
We should note that
the central stasis of the debate about Mr. Baldwin's personal responsibility has shifted. Our original controversy was about whether Mr. Baldwin broke rules of safe handling and about whether the relevant rule set was local (industry rules) or global (the rules that apply to hunters, sport shooters, collectors, cops, etc.). Baldwin's recent comments have offered a positive defense (his public comments can and will be applicable to him in court) which shifts the question to that of the functionality of the gun itself. In short, we were exclusively discussing whether this was a
negligent discharge and now we're discussing whether this was, at least in part, an
accidental discharge.
By his own comments in this interview,
Baldwin has acknowledged that safe-handling rules were known to him and respected by him. Going forward, this will limit his ability to credibly claim that he was just handed "cold gun" and cannot be blamed for anything that happened downstream of that hand-off. He now claims that he did not pull the trigger, which will throw scrutiny on the condition of the weapon itself.
No, no, no, no, no. I would never point a gun at anyone and pull a trigger at them, never. Never. That was the training that I had. You don’t point a gun at me and pull the trigger. On day one of my instruction in this business, people said to me, “Never take a gun and go click, click, click, click, click. Because even though it’s incremental, you damage the firing pin on the gun if you do that, don’t do that.”
If the gun is inspected and found to be defective, this will certainly help him. At this point, it obvious that experts will need to assess the functionality of the gun at trial as the gun is literally being blamed.
In addition, Mr. Baldwin is asserting that Hutchins told him to point the weapon at her and handle it in a certain way, which shifts the blame (rightly or wrongly) to the victim. So
blame has been shifted to both the firearm and the decedant. If his lawyers did not carefully brief him to say this, he is potentially skating out onto thin ice.
Alec Baldwin : (
01:36)
This is a marking rehearsal where I’m going to show her, she’s standing next to the camera. She’s like this, you are me. She’s got a monitor here. The camera is here filming that way. She takes a monitor that is his monitor the operator and turns it toward her. It swivels and she says to me, “Hold the gun lower, go to your right. Okay, right there. All right, do that. Now, show it a little bit lower.” And she’s getting me to position the gun.
Everything is in her direction. She’s guiding me through how she wants me to hold the gun for this angle. And I draw the gun out and I find a mark, I draw the gun out, cut. And what’s really urgent is the gun wasn’t meant to be fired in that angle.
George Stephanopoulos: (
02:13)
So if you’re shooting directly into the camera lens, you’re not aiming.
Alec Baldwin : (
02:17)
I’m not shooting into the camera lens, I’m shooting just off.
George Stephanopoulos: (
02:19)
Just off?
Alec Baldwin : (
02:20)
Right. In her direction.
I’m holding the gun where she told me to hold it, which ended up being aimed right below her armpit is what I was told. I don’t know. This was a completely incidental shot, an angle that may not have ended up in the film at all, but we kept doing this. So then I said to her, “Now in this scene, I’m going to the gun.” And I said,
“Do you want to see that?” And she said, “Yes.” So I take the gun and I start to cock the gun. I’m not going to pull the trigger.
Alec Baldwin : (
02:45)
I said, “Do you see that?” She goes, “Well, just cheat it down and tilt it down a little bit like that.”
And I cock the gun, I go, “Can you see that? Can you see that? Can you see that? And then I let go of the hammer of the gun and the gun goes off. I let go of the hammer of the gun, the gun goes off.
That last statement may prove crucial to his defense. He claims that he cocked the gun. This means pulling the hammer back to a point where gun clicks into the engagement of the sear. If he did this and if he did not pull the trigger, then the only way the gun could go off would be if the gun was broken. And (again) this means that his claim "Well, the trigger wasn’t pulled, I didn’t pull the trigger" is going to have to be proved by establishing that the gun was not in good working order.
Closed Thread
