Alec Baldwin’s Hollywood career hangs in the balance.
He’s currently being tried for the fatal shooting that took place on a movie set.
Now Baldwin is making a desperate attempt to get out of one manslaughter charge.
Alec Baldwin could face years in prison if he’s convicted of manslaughter in the shooting death of Halyna Hutchins during filming of the western Rust.
Baldwin fired the gun that shot Hutchins during rehearsals, which raised all sorts of red flags about gun safety on the set.
Both Baldwin and armorer (the person responsible for handling guns on set) Hannah Gutierrez-Reed are facing charges.
In Baldwin’s case, he was both the actor who handled the gun and one of the producers on the film, so he had an extra burden of responsibility.
Now Baldwin’s lawyers are attempting to improve his chances of acquittal by trying to remove the special prosecutor assigned to the case.
Special Prosecutor Andrea Reeb, a Republican who served as a DA in New Mexico’s Ninth Judicial District, was recently elected to the State House of Representatives.
Baldwin’s lawyers believe that is a conflict of interest.
They wrote in a court filing, “The special prosecutor in this case, Andrea Reeb, is a member of the New Mexico House of Representatives. Under Section 1 of Article III of the New Mexico Constitution, however, a sitting member of the Legislature may not ‘exercise any powers properly belonging’ to either the executive or judicial branch.”
The attorneys argue that it’s a violation of separation of powers.
They continued, “Doing so vests two core powers of different branches — legislating and prosecuting — in the same person and is thus barred by the plain language of Article III of the New Mexico Constitution…Were the arrangement here approved by the courts, future District Attorneys could seek to curry favor with legislators who control their budgets by appointing them to high-profile cases — distorting the legislative process,” the motion continues.”
Reeb rebutted the argument made by Baldwin’s attorneys.
She wrote in a statement, “Everybody’s equal under the law. It doesn’t matter if he’s a liberal Democrat and I’m a conservative Republican. My job has always been to prosecute crimes and hold defendants accountable and help victims. In this case it’s no different.”
Even if Reeb were to be kicked off the case, the evidence against Baldwin could be too great to overcome.
Stay tuned to Right News Wire for any updates to this ongoing story.
