Yeah, this quote is from Robert Schilling, former chief of the New Mexico State Police, who was assigned to this case before being pulled off of it for reasons that are apparent. He sent it privately to the prosecutor's office, and it became public later. (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/12/arts/rust-trial-pause-alec-baldwin-shooting.html)
"The conduct of the Santa Fe County SheriffтАЩs Office during and after their initial investigation is reprehensible and unprofessional to a degree I still have no words for. Not I or 200 more proficient investigators than I can/could clean up the mess delivered to your office in October 2022 (1 year since the initial incident тАж inexcusable)."
Either the Sheriff's Office was entirely incompetent, or someone (or multiple someones) was very, very eager to prosecute a high profile case and didn't follow procedure - when procedure kills cases, as is incredibly well-established law. Puts the case in an entirely new light, or should. This isn't rocket science or new - anything that can possibly be helpful to the accused must be disclosed by the prosecution, period. It's shocking that the prosecutor would leave something like that out - because including something that's probably completely irrelevant isn't a burden, and makes your case airtight, as it should be.
Look, I know you are a "movie person" and that you nothing about the use and responsibility surrounding firearms. You have made that very clear. You want fantasy land protected from responsibility for their actions. It was clear that the sheriffs were boobs from the start. That became clear in the previous trial. I think they were intimidated by the hollywood scene of all this, or maybe they are stupid and incompetent all the time. I have certainly seen that. What you don't seem to be able to get your mind around is the fact that how live ammo got in the set was irrelevant to this case. Baldwin was under a legal obligation to treat that gun as if it were loaded at all times. The live round could have fallen into an empty chamber from Mars and it would not matter. He had to cock the gun, he had to point at Hutchins, he had to pull the trigger. There are no circumstances and analogies you can dream up that change those facts. He was not legally, morally, practically privileged to point that pistol at a human being and pull the trigger. The responsibility for those acts lay with him alone.
I understand that our system of law allows for the guilty to go free. That does not make them not guilty.
Please, for your and the sake of society please do not ever handle firearms. Your mindset is not compatible with that serious responsibility.
Except, you're wrong about me in all particulars. But while I follow gun safety rules scrupulously, I also know guns aren't magic - they're machines. And as machines you can keep them safe several ways. Responsible gun owners use multiple safety rules to protect against failure of any one or even two safety barriers, but that doesn't mean guns can fire unless they're loaded with live ammunition. If you obsessively control live ammunition rather than the firearm, you can keep the gun just as safe as when you obsessively control the firearm. For obvious reasons this is a lot harder for responsible gun owners - you actually want to shoot your gun, not quarantine your entire house of ammunition, and you'll have a lot more ammunition than guns even if you only own a single box of rounds or shells - so it's not a practical control for a firearm owner, but it IS a real control. No live round in the chamber, no bullet out the muzzle regardless of what you do to the gun. We are in agreement that Alec Baldwin is an asshole who hates guns so he isn't a responsible gun owner - because he's not one at all. But the safety rules in place for the set would work if followed - doesn't matter what you do to a gun if it never has live rounds in it. Repeating the fundamental gun safety rules doesn't change that guns will not go off without ammunition. So while I would never, ever point a gun at someone and I do follow all gun safety rules in my home and at my range, I also understand how a Hollywood set is different and why - because they do crap for dramatic effect that would never be safe in real life. I understand that guns take live rounds to fire, so that if you scrupulously control ammunition you can keep guns every bit as safe as if you scrupulously control the guns.
So no, I fully understand firearms, I can (and have) disassembled every firearm I own down to its basic components and the reassembled them, and in many instances have built them entirely from unassembled basic components. But though Alec Baldwin is a horrible person and an anti-gun fanatic, I'm not going to ignore that, if practiced as he had every expectation they were, the controls on ammunition and the loading of firearms were more than adequate to protect safety - because guns without live rounds cannot fire. Just because we do things entirely differently doesn't mean he has to do things the same way.
And the way to make more people who support gun rights and responsible gun ownership is to familiarize them with guns, not say "do not ever handle firearms". You take people to the range, teach them, let them responsibly fire a gun, and let them see that guns aren't black magic. The last thing you should do is tell someone never to handle them (unless they're a convicted felon or someone else rightly barred from owning them). Your mindset is entirely wrong there - more people being taught what guns are and how to handle them is better for all of us.
"Got away with it". We don't actually know anything about "got away" - we got the prosecution's case, then the ruling that the prosecution withheld evidence from the defense. We don't know everything that would have come out in the defense or what their final case would have been. Withholding any evidence, ANY, even if the prosecutor thinks it's not relevant, is a big, glaring error on the part of the police and prosecution in a high profile case - which raises a lot of questions. If this was an open and shut case they should have been forthcoming with everything and been prepared to deal with something as glaringly related as rounds delivered to the police by a retired detective who claimed they related to the case. But they weren't - so why? "Not relevant" is very, very fishy. But we'll learn more.
Prosecutor screwed up in discovery He got away with it. Dismissed with prejudiced. He got away with it.
Yeah, this quote is from Robert Schilling, former chief of the New Mexico State Police, who was assigned to this case before being pulled off of it for reasons that are apparent. He sent it privately to the prosecutor's office, and it became public later. (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/12/arts/rust-trial-pause-alec-baldwin-shooting.html)
"The conduct of the Santa Fe County SheriffтАЩs Office during and after their initial investigation is reprehensible and unprofessional to a degree I still have no words for. Not I or 200 more proficient investigators than I can/could clean up the mess delivered to your office in October 2022 (1 year since the initial incident тАж inexcusable)."
Either the Sheriff's Office was entirely incompetent, or someone (or multiple someones) was very, very eager to prosecute a high profile case and didn't follow procedure - when procedure kills cases, as is incredibly well-established law. Puts the case in an entirely new light, or should. This isn't rocket science or new - anything that can possibly be helpful to the accused must be disclosed by the prosecution, period. It's shocking that the prosecutor would leave something like that out - because including something that's probably completely irrelevant isn't a burden, and makes your case airtight, as it should be.
Look, I know you are a "movie person" and that you nothing about the use and responsibility surrounding firearms. You have made that very clear. You want fantasy land protected from responsibility for their actions. It was clear that the sheriffs were boobs from the start. That became clear in the previous trial. I think they were intimidated by the hollywood scene of all this, or maybe they are stupid and incompetent all the time. I have certainly seen that. What you don't seem to be able to get your mind around is the fact that how live ammo got in the set was irrelevant to this case. Baldwin was under a legal obligation to treat that gun as if it were loaded at all times. The live round could have fallen into an empty chamber from Mars and it would not matter. He had to cock the gun, he had to point at Hutchins, he had to pull the trigger. There are no circumstances and analogies you can dream up that change those facts. He was not legally, morally, practically privileged to point that pistol at a human being and pull the trigger. The responsibility for those acts lay with him alone.
I understand that our system of law allows for the guilty to go free. That does not make them not guilty.
Please, for your and the sake of society please do not ever handle firearms. Your mindset is not compatible with that serious responsibility.
Except, you're wrong about me in all particulars. But while I follow gun safety rules scrupulously, I also know guns aren't magic - they're machines. And as machines you can keep them safe several ways. Responsible gun owners use multiple safety rules to protect against failure of any one or even two safety barriers, but that doesn't mean guns can fire unless they're loaded with live ammunition. If you obsessively control live ammunition rather than the firearm, you can keep the gun just as safe as when you obsessively control the firearm. For obvious reasons this is a lot harder for responsible gun owners - you actually want to shoot your gun, not quarantine your entire house of ammunition, and you'll have a lot more ammunition than guns even if you only own a single box of rounds or shells - so it's not a practical control for a firearm owner, but it IS a real control. No live round in the chamber, no bullet out the muzzle regardless of what you do to the gun. We are in agreement that Alec Baldwin is an asshole who hates guns so he isn't a responsible gun owner - because he's not one at all. But the safety rules in place for the set would work if followed - doesn't matter what you do to a gun if it never has live rounds in it. Repeating the fundamental gun safety rules doesn't change that guns will not go off without ammunition. So while I would never, ever point a gun at someone and I do follow all gun safety rules in my home and at my range, I also understand how a Hollywood set is different and why - because they do crap for dramatic effect that would never be safe in real life. I understand that guns take live rounds to fire, so that if you scrupulously control ammunition you can keep guns every bit as safe as if you scrupulously control the guns.
So no, I fully understand firearms, I can (and have) disassembled every firearm I own down to its basic components and the reassembled them, and in many instances have built them entirely from unassembled basic components. But though Alec Baldwin is a horrible person and an anti-gun fanatic, I'm not going to ignore that, if practiced as he had every expectation they were, the controls on ammunition and the loading of firearms were more than adequate to protect safety - because guns without live rounds cannot fire. Just because we do things entirely differently doesn't mean he has to do things the same way.
And the way to make more people who support gun rights and responsible gun ownership is to familiarize them with guns, not say "do not ever handle firearms". You take people to the range, teach them, let them responsibly fire a gun, and let them see that guns aren't black magic. The last thing you should do is tell someone never to handle them (unless they're a convicted felon or someone else rightly barred from owning them). Your mindset is entirely wrong there - more people being taught what guns are and how to handle them is better for all of us.
"Got away with it". We don't actually know anything about "got away" - we got the prosecution's case, then the ruling that the prosecution withheld evidence from the defense. We don't know everything that would have come out in the defense or what their final case would have been. Withholding any evidence, ANY, even if the prosecutor thinks it's not relevant, is a big, glaring error on the part of the police and prosecution in a high profile case - which raises a lot of questions. If this was an open and shut case they should have been forthcoming with everything and been prepared to deal with something as glaringly related as rounds delivered to the police by a retired detective who claimed they related to the case. But they weren't - so why? "Not relevant" is very, very fishy. But we'll learn more.