I’m not a lawyer, have not been to law school, and my vocation does not require a deep knowledge of the law, but I do have a personal interest in such matters.
So, anyone who is a lawyer or taught law should know much more than I do. However, this is the claim you’ve repeatedly made that I find very difficult to believe:
“There is no such thing as an unintentional crime.”
You mock citations from a generic source like Wikipedia (which merely serves to frame the discussion), but you cite zero authoritative sources yourself. So, perhaps you could trouble yourself to make at least a single citation of someone credible who agrees with your broad claim.
Now you’ve modified this original claim with some exceptions like “minor traffic offenses” and narrowed it to “jailable”. However, even with these considerations, I don’t readily see support for your claim.
https://www.findlaw.com/criminal/criminal-law-basics/mens-rea-a-defendant-s-mental-state.html
“Most crimes require what attorneys refer to as mens rea, which is Latin for a guilty mind.”
Findlaw says “most”. Not “all”.
It further states: “Finally, there are some criminal laws that don’t require any mens rea or mental state. These strict liability laws apply to certain acts which entail criminal punishment regardless of intent...”
“Back to my point. Alex Baldwin did not act with ‘criminal intent’ because: 1) he was not ‘conscious of the risk’ and 2) he did not intend ‘to act in a manner that created a high degree of risk of human life.’”
I don’t think you have all of the facts. Baldwin has worked with guns on numerous film sets. He is an advocate for gun control BECAUSE he believes guns to be very dangerous. He knows that strict precautions are essential to keep people on a film set safe from guns. Not only as the lead actor using the gun that killed someone but also as a producer who carried more weight on production decisions than anyone because of his celebrity and notoriety, Baldwin had more responsibility than anyone else on the set.
1. corners were cut to save money on this production, including when it came to the experience level of the person hired and duties assigned related to gun safety
2. gun inspections were not always performed when safety guidelines called for them
3. a camera operator had already complained to the production manager about gun safety issues prior to the death
4. there had already been 2 accidental prop gun discharges
5. there was no investigation as to the cause and where safety procedures had not failed, though this is industry protocol
6. no safety meetings were called due to the gun misfires, though this is industry protocol
7. a crew member alerted the unit production manager of a 3rd gun misfire prior to the fatal incident, and no precautions were taken then either
8. on the day of the incident union crew members walked off the set due to complaints over safety issues, and they were replaced by non-union crew members
9. the assistant director handed the gun to Baldwin when the fatality occurred, and this is against standard gun safety protocol
Baldwin claims he was never notified of safety issues. Email and text message records, as well as any other communications, should have been taken into evidence immediately after the incident. If a reasonable case can be made that Baldwin was truly unaware of any safety issues prior to the incident, he might have a strong defense against criminal liability as a producer.
As an actor who was also a producer, and as someone with many years of experience, Baldwin should have known the way he was handed the gun was not according to protocol.
I have a film degree and have had to deal with the improper handling of a gun on a film set. I was not even responsible for safety, but I had the production stopped to address the issue. While there might be some unusual circumstances I have not thought of, I think there is NEVER ANY reason to point a gun at another person on a film set. But if there is some cinematic reason it might be necessary, this is the time for everyone to be more than certain that no safety issue exists.
Baldwin was certainly not proactive in insuring gun safety on his film set. Intent or no intent, I can’t say with certainty that Baldwin is criminally liable for negligence and reckless behavior, but it sure looks that way from where I’m standing.
This isn’t over.
I am on vacation and using a phone to respond to comments, so I can’t give you the “War and Peace” version, but...
1) Strict Liability offenses—At English common law, which was adopted in the USA, there was no such thing as an “unintentional” crime. As America modernized, legislatures found the need to enact certain laws to penalize minor stuff, e.g., traffic violations and regulatory offenses. I don’t remember the Supreme Court case, but SCOTUS handed down a decision in the 60s or 70s that held that “strict liability” offenses were constitutional as long as the penalty attached to the crime was nominal, e.g., fines. For example, if I’m driving your car, which has an expired tag on it, it is NOT a defense in court that I did not know about the expired tag. I’m stuck paying the $25 fine. In short, in America we don’t put people in jail who do not possess some level of criminal intent.
2. Intent—Every crime has an intent element, and some have multiple intent elements. The crime of theft requires that I take someone else’s property with the specific intent to deprive that person of the property permanently. Example: If I mistakenly pick up the wrong luggage at the airport, I am innocent of theft on two grounds: first, I did not have a general criminal intent, because I thought the luggage was mine; second, obviously I also lacked the intent to convert the suitcase to my permanent possession. Example 2: I decide to take my neighbor’s new Corvette for a spin w/o tellingh him. Am I guilty of auto theft? No, because I intended to return the car. However, I am guilty of “unauthorized use” of the car, which is a general intent crime, i.e., just taking the car w/o authority is enough regardless of a “specific intent” to permanently steal the car.
Baldwin’s case—I will confess that I do not know every fact, but assuming that 1) Baldwin was uanaware of bullets being in the gun; and 2) Baldwin believed that the armorer checked the gun to ensure its safety, I don’t see any crime. Allow me to illustrate with some examples of involuntary manslaugher:
1) Person A drives down a residential, suburban street at 150 mph (in a 35 mph zone) and kills a kid who runs into the street to chase a ball. This is clearly involuntary manslaughter.
2) Person B leaves her baby in the car to go into the grocery store; she is gone for 45 minutes and the baby dies because it is 95 degrees out. This is also clearly involuntary manslaughter.
3) Alec Baldwin: Is an actor on the stage of a western where everybody on the set knows that he will be pointing and shooting a gun loaded with blanks and he proceeds to fire that gun and unwittingly kills a producer on the set because, unbeknowst to him, he was handed a prop gun with live ammo.
The test: If you, my friend, were a police officer and you witnessed Person A driving 150 mph on a suburban street BEFORE he hit the kid, would you have taken action to stop the driver? Answer: Hell yeah. If you were a police officer and you witnessed a young mom leave her baby in a hot car, would you immediately take action to stop it? Hell yeah. But.....If you, as a police officer, were watching Alec Baldwin’s actions on the set of “Rust,” would you have run out on the set and screamed: “Stop, this is reckless disregard for human life!” Answer: No, you would not. In fact, NOBODY on the set, including the victim, saw this coming. And that, in a nutshell, is why Baldwin did not commit the crime of involuntary manslaughter. There was no known, obvious risk of him pulling the trigger of the prop gun.