Atlanta-based Court TV is providing extensive coverage of the upcoming trial of Alec Baldwin, who is facing an involuntary manslaughter charge following the on-set death on his movie “Rust” in 2021.
Jury selection is scheduled to begin Tuesday.
Baldwin, as lead actor in the Western film, was rehearsing a scene in New Mexico when a prop gun went off. Unfortunately, it had live ammo, a bullet killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injuring director Joel Souza.
The Oscar-winning actor faces up to 18 months in prison if convicted.
Court TV will air the trial live and the network’s cameras inside the courtroom will provide pool feed coverage to all media outlets.
The network is planning blanket coverage on the case, with multiple journalists on the ground in Sante Fe, New Mexico, where the trial is being held: lead anchor Vinnie Politan, anchor Ted Rowlands, crime and justice correspondent Matt Johnson and legal correspondent Kelly Krapf.
Krapf and Johnson will tag team from inside the courtroom while Rowlands will anchor the first week outside the courthouse. Politan will provide live reports and anchor his primetime show “Closing Arguments” on location during the final week of the trial through the verdict.
Court TV has also released a 45-minute documentary called “The Case Against Alec Baldwin,” now available on YouTube.
Baldwin in multiple interviews has said he did not pull the trigger and the gun misfired a bullet. But a 2022 FBI forensic report of the .45-caliber Colt prop revolver revealed the gun could not have gone off without the trigger being pulled.
The film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, responsible for weapons on set, was charged with involuntary manslaughter and tampering with evidence. A jury found her guilty earlier this year of the involuntary manslaughter charge and she is now serving an 18-month prison sentence.
“Whenever you have a celebrity defendant, that’s going to draw eyeballs,” said Rowlands in a brief interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday.
Rowlands has covered trials for ABC News and CNN as well as Court TV since its relaunch in 2018 in Atlanta, from Michael Jackson, O.J. Simpson and Johnny Depp to Jody Arias and Scott Peterson.
“What’s particularly interesting is there’s a very good chance Alec Baldwin walks out of this courtroom. He has a great team behind him,” Rowlands said. “And the case against him isn’t as strong as the one against Gutierrez-Reed. He’s an actor. It’s not clear in terms of his responsibility for gun safety. The defense has a compelling argument.”
The judge, he noted, expects the trial to last two to three weeks. “We are covering this wall to wall,” Rowlands said.
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