- Alec Baldwin was charged in connection to the October 2021 accidental shooting death of Halyna Hutchins.
- New Mexico prosecutors filed two involuntary manslaughter charges against Baldwin in January.
Alec Baldwin could spend up to 18 months in prison if he's convicted in connection with the accidental shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the film "Rust" in 2021.
In January, New Mexico First Judicial District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies charged Baldwin and Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the set's armorer in charge of weapons, with two counts each of involuntary manslaughter.
Attorneys for Baldwin, Gutierrez-Reed, and a spokesperson for the district attorney's office did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment on Friday.
Both are being charged in the alternative, meaning the jury can only convict them on one of the charges, not both. Baldwin and Gutierrez-Reed face a maximum of 18 months in prison if convicted on either charge.
Initially, prosecutors included a firearms enhancement on one of the charges, which carries a mandatory five-year prison sentence. But it was dropped in February after Baldwin's lawyers complained it was unconstitutional.
Baldwin was practicing a scene on the set of "Rust" when the weapon he was holding fired and a bullet fatally struck the film's cinematographer, Hutchins, and injured the film's director, Joel Souza.
In an affidavit for a search warrant, obtained byDeadline in 2021, Santa Fe Sheriff's Department Detective Joel Cano described the lead up to Hutchins' death, saying that Assistant Director Dave Halls had grabbed "one of three 'prop-guns' that was set up" by Gutierrez-Reed on a cart.
Cano said he learned that Halls then grabbed one of the prop-guns and took it to Baldwin, yelling "cold gun" to indicate that the gun didn't have any live rounds in it.
Cano said Baldwin then fired the weapon, striking Hutchins and Souza.
Investigators have not revealed how a live round ended up in the gun.
Baldwin told ABC News two months after the shooting that he never pulled the trigger, but an FBI report countered that, saying "the revolver could not be made to fire without a pull of the trigger."
Baldwin's attorney, Luke Nikas, told Insider in January that the decision to bring charges against the actor "distorts Halyna Hutchins' tragic death and represents a terrible miscarriage of justice."
"Hannah is, and has always been, very emotional and sad about this tragic accident. But she did not commit involuntary manslaughter," Gutierrez-Reed's lawyer, Jason Bowles, said in a statement in January.
"We intend to bring the full truth to light and believe Hannah will be exonerated of wrongdoing by a jury," the statement said.