Alec Baldwin pleaded not guilty Wednesday to an involuntary manslaughter charge in the 2021 accidental fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on a New Mexico movie set.
A grand jury indicted Baldwin, 65, on the single count on Jan. 19.
Baldwin was holding a prop gun on the set of the movie “Rust” at Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe on Oct. 21 when the gun fired a live round and killed Hutchins, 42.
Director Joel Souza was wounded.
Baldwin waived arraignment and pleaded not guilty, an attorney for him said.
Baldwin has maintained that he did not pull the trigger before the gun fired. He also has said the gun had been declared “cold,” with no live ammunition, by assistant director Dave Halls.
Halls pleaded no contest in March to a misdemeanor charge of negligent use of a deadly weapon and was sentenced to six months of unsupervised probation.
The armorer for the production, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, was charged last year with involuntary manslaughter, and her trial is set to begin Feb. 21. She has pleaded not guilty.
In the scene, Baldwin was to draw his gun, raise it “and start to cock the pistol — cut,” he said in an interview with ABC News in 2021.
Baldwin said then that he was taking direction from Hutchins and pulled the hammer back as far as he could without cocking it.
Baldwin's attorneys, Luke Nikas and Alex Spiro, have said they look forward to their day in court.
Baldwin had been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the on-set shooting, but that case was dropped in April. Prosecutors said at the time that new facts in the case required additional investigation and forensic analysis.
