Alec Baldwin pleads not guilty to manslaughter in deadly ‘Rust’ shooting

Director Joel Souza was wounded in the incident.

Baldwin waived arraignment and entered a plea of not guilty, an attorney for the actor said.

Baldwin has maintained that he did not pull the trigger on the gun before it fired. He also has said that 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 serve 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 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 that they look forward to their day in court.

Baldwin had previously been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the on-set shooting, but that case was dropped in April 2023. Prosecutors said at the time there were new facts in the case that required additional investigation and forensic analysis.