Experts question prosecutors' strategy against weapons expert in Alec Baldwin case - By Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press
More than a year and a half after Alec Baldwin shot and killed a cinematographer while rehearsing a scene on set in New Mexico, prosecutors have yet to solve the biggest mystery in the tragic case: How did live rounds get on the set?
Prosecutors said in their latest court filing that they have some evidence to support the theory that weapons expert Hannah Gutierrez-Reed may be responsible for the introduction of the rounds. But they have offered no details, and barring more evidence, they're now basing part of their case against her on the idea that a night of drinking and marijuana use left her incapable of the judgment necessary to ensure the set was safe.
Gutierrez-Reed's attorneys argue that prosecutors are resorting to character assassination, and some legal experts are doubtful it will make for a winning strategy for prosecutors.
Several lawyers who are not involved with the case but have been watching it closely said Wednesday that prosecution statements in response to a defense motion last month seeking to dismiss her involuntary manslaughter charge are vague and would be difficult to prove.
"When you think about how they've conducted this investigation since the beginning, it's almost in step with what they had done before. They need to have more specificity when it comes to that allegation, because it's kind of serious. To be throwing it out there doesn't look that good," said Miguel Custodio, a Los Angeles personal injury attorney.
Prosecutors said they have witnesses who will testify that Gutierrez-Reed drank and smoked marijuana in the evenings during the filming of "Rust." However, the weapons expert was never tested, and it's unclear what evidence prosecutors could present to make the case that she could have been hungover when she loaded a live bullet into the revolver that the actor used.
John Day, a Santa Fe-based criminal defense attorney, noted that prosecutors did not say in the filing that Gutierrez-Reed was impaired but rather used the colloquial term "hungover," which could mean many things.
"It's one more strange development, but it still doesn't address — and they've said they don't know — how live rounds got onto the set," Day said. "And they haven't said specifically anything more about her involvement except that she was the armorer."
A preliminary hearing for Gutierrez-Reed is scheduled in August. A judge is expected to decide then if there's probable cause for the charge to move forward.
In their filing, the prosecutors said they expected to decide within the next 60 days whether to recharge Baldwin, depending on the results of an analysis of the gun.
The involuntary manslaughter charge faced by Baldwin, who also was a producer on the film, was dismissed in April, with prosecutors citing new evidence and the need for more time to investigate.
Baldwin was pointing a gun at cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during a rehearsal on the set in October 2021 when it went off, killing her and wounding director Joel Souza.
Ted Spaulding, an Atlanta attorney who also is not involved in the case, said that while it would be easier to argue that active impairment leads to negligence, prosecutors can still argue that alcohol and drug use — and being hungover — likely lead to negligence.
"This will come down to whether or not they have credible evidence that an impairment in judgment caused the injury and that the impairment is linked to drug and alcohol use," Spaulding said. "We see cases all the time where someone has marijuana particulates in their system and argue that it contributed to a wreck or injury, but because Gutierrez-Reed wasn't tested immediately after the shooting, they have no proof that marijuana was in her system, outside of witness testimony."
Custodio said the prosecution's insinuation that Gutierrez-Reed was hungover might work in the defense's favor.
"It's pretty reasonable for the defense to say 'you're just bringing this up now, which continues to show this pattern of sloppiness,'" he said. "Prosecutors saying she was 'probably hungover' sounds like a very tenuous assumption."
Case to be dismissed against only man charged with murder in deadly shootout in New Mexico - Associated Press
Criminal charges will be dismissed against the only person charged with murder in a shooting at a motorcycle rally in a northern New Mexico mountain resort town that killed three men and injured five other people.
A prosecutor said in a filing Monday that the charges against 30-year-old Jacob Castillo of Rio Rancho are being dismissed because of the ongoing investigation into the May 27 shooting in Red River. Prosecutors can refile the charges.
Authorities say the three men who were killed were members of a rival outlaw biker gang and that the the violence stemmed from a previous altercation involving the Bandidos and Waterdogs gangs in Albuquerque.
The Eighth Judicial District Attorney's office and Castillo's attorney, Adam Oakey, didn't immediately respond late Tuesday afternoon to a request for comment on the dismissal.
Those killed were identified as 26-year-old Anthony Silva of Los Lunas, 46-year-old Damian Breaux of Socorro and 46-year-old Randy Sanchez of Albuquerque.
The US Energy Department is spending $26M to help find a temporary site to store spent nuclear fuel - Associated Press
Federal energy regulators have announced that they are spending $26 million to find communities willing to accept a temporary federal site to store spent nuclear fuel while a permanent repository is completed.
Thirteen groups made up of industry, academic, nonprofit, government and community representatives will each get $2 million to explore the most equitable approach to picking an interim site to store highly radioactive waste from nuclear power plants, according to a recent news release from the U.S. Energy Department. The approach will include a dialogue with residents and local governments, the department said.
This study is being conducted with the aim of creating a federal storage site independent of the two private sites proposed for southern New Mexico and Texas, which are embroiled in heated political and legal battles.
The lack of a permanent disposal site has created a dilemma for the federal government as it seeks a temporary hub to move the spent fuel piling up at 70 nuclear power plants in three dozen states.
Those who oppose temporary waste sites in their areas contend federal law — and now a newly passed New Mexico law — require a permanent repository to exist or at least be in the works before an interim one can be built.
Biden to extend legal status for 4 nationalities, reversing Trump but irking some - By Elliot Spagat Associated Press
The Biden administration said Tuesday that it will extend legal status by 18 months for more than 300,000 people from El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Nepal, disappointing some advocates and members of Congress who sought a more generous offer.
The extensions provide "continued safety and protection" for those already legally in the U.S. on Temporary Protected Status, which is due to end soon under Trump-era decisions, said U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
While the decision benefits an estimated 334,000 people from the four countries, including 239,000 from El Salvador, some had hoped for a far more sweeping gesture including expanded eligibility for more recent arrivals from El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat who strongly pressed the White House for extensions, applauded the step but added it "simply does not go far enough" and suggested it "may have been driven in part by political calculations instead of sound policy rationale and the conditions in each country."
Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat and House member who was among 116 members of Congress who signed a letter in May seeking an expansion, said the administration "has allowed political fear rather than humanitarian concern to drive its decision."
The administration has aggressively used TPS, a 1990 law that allows people already in the United States to remain in 18-month increments if the Homeland Security secretary determines that natural disasters or civil strife prevent them from safely returning home.
Under Biden's watch, the number of people eligible has soared more than 70% to nearly 1 million people by December, reversing a Trump-era trend, according to an analysis by the Cato Institute, which advocates for more immigration. TPS encompasses 15 countries, including Venezuelan and Ukraine, up from 10.
The extensions announced Tuesday will apply to about 239,000 El Salvadorans through March 9, 2025, about 76,000 Hondurans through July 5, 2025, about 14,500 Nepalese through June 24, 2025 and about 4,000 Nicaraguans through July 5, 2025.
But TPS beneficiaries from Central America are required to have lived in the United States more than two decades to be eligible, prompting criticism from advocates that the administration failed to consider recent turmoil in countries including Nicaragua, which last year became one of the top sources of migration to the U.S. TPS for El Salvador was granted after an earthquake in the Central American country in 2001 and for Honduras and Nicaragua after a hurricane in 1998.
Advocates also pushed to include Guatemala, whose people have never been eligible for TPS.
While nothing in Tuesday's announcement precludes the administration from later expanding TPS, immediate prospects appeared dimmer.
"It's a disappointment," said Berta Sanles, who has lived in the United States without legal status since she arrived from Nicaragua with her husband and 6-year-old daughter more than two decades ago. The Miami resident says she's holding out hope, though.
Krish O'Mara Vignarajah, chief executive of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, said the extensions are "welcome relief for hundreds of thousands of people who have found safety in the United States, many of whom have called this country home for decades now." But she also called it "a missed opportunity to expand protections to more recent arrivals, whose return to danger would be no less devastating."
TPS has been absent from a slew of carrot-and-stick measures that the administration has announced in recent months around the end of pandemic-related asylum restrictions on May 11, known as Title 42. They include parole for up to 30,000 people a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua or Venezuela and, on the flip side, a virtual ban on asylum for those who travel to the U.S. border and enter the country illegally after traveling through another country, like Mexico.
New Mexico authorities have suspects in 1988 cold case disappearance of teen girl - By Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press
It's been almost 35 years since Tara Calico disappeared during a bicycle ride near her home in New Mexico, but authorities announced Tuesday that they have enough evidence now to turn the case over to the district attorney's office for possible prosecution.
The suspects haven't been named and court records remain sealed. Authorities said they hope to provide more information as the case progresses.
Valencia County Sheriff Denise Vigil and other officials gathered at the courthouse in Los Lunas, about 24 miles (38.6 kilometers) south of Albuquerque, to provide an update in the case, which has become well-known within the law enforcement community and among parents worried about their children biking through the rural county.
The 19-year-old Calico, an avid cyclist, was last seen on a September morning in 1988 bicycling just a couple miles from home. Witnesses reported seeing her riding her bicycle along New Mexico Highway 47, with an older model truck following closely behind her. By the afternoon, when she hadn't returned for lunch, her mother reported her missing.
She vanished along with her bicycle, and was never found.
Despite having limited resources, Vigil said investigators never gave up on the case. Enlisting the help of federal investigators, she said the sheriff's office followed up on many theories, leads and tips that poured in over the years.
Vigil told reporters that Calico's family has suffered long enough and that while her parents are no longer alive, her two sisters and two brothers deserve to see justice.
"The people responsible will soon have to answer to this family and to the community who has never stopped thinking of Tara," the sheriff said.
The sheriff's office also received help from the Rocky Mountain Information Network, which provides investigative funding and analytical assistance for smaller law enforcement agencies. Officials did not provide any specifics about the evidence that was analyzed or what led to the break in the case.
In 2019, the FBI posted a reward of up to $20,000 for information regarding Calico's whereabouts, as well as the arrest and conviction of those responsible for her disappearance.
Family and friends have told authorities that Calico was a friendly girl who was both a superior student and athlete. At the time of her disappearance, she was working full time at a local bank and attending college.
Cormac McCarthy, lauded author of 'The Road' and 'No Country for Old Men,' dies at 89 - By Sue Major Holmes And Hillel Italie Associated Press
Cormac McCarthy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who in prose both dense and brittle took readers from the southern Appalachians to the desert Southwest in such novels as "The Road," "Blood Meridian" and "All the Pretty Horses," died Tuesday. He was 89.
Publisher Alfred A. Knopf, a Penguin Random House imprint, announced that McCarthy died of natural causes at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
"For 60 years, he demonstrated an unwavering dedication to his craft, and to exploring the infinite possibilities and power of the written word," Penguin Random House CEO Nihar Malaviya said in a statement. "Millions of readers around the world embraced his characters, his mythic themes, and the intimate emotional truths he laid bare on every page, in brilliant novels that will remain both timely and timeless, for generations to come."
McCarthy, raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, was compared to William Faulkner for his expansive, Old Testament style and rural settings. McCarthy's themes, like Faulkner's, often were bleak and violent and dramatized how the past overwhelmed the present. Across stark and forbidding landscapes and rundown border communities, he placed drifters, thieves, prostitutes and old, broken men, all unable to escape fates determined for them well before they were born. As the doomed John Grady Cole of McCarthy's celebrated "Border" trilogy would learn, dreams of a better life were only dreams, and falling in love an act of folly.
"Every man's death is a standing in for every other," McCarthy wrote in "Cities of the Plain," the trilogy's final book. "And since death comes to all there is no way to abate the fear of it except to love that man who stands for us."
McCarthy's own story was one of belated, and continuing, achievement and popularity. Little known to the public at age 60, he would become one of the country's most honored and successful writers despite rarely talking to the press. He broke through commercially in 1992 with "All the Pretty Horses" and over the next 15 years won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer, was a guest on Oprah Winfrey's show and saw his novel "No Country for Old Men" adapted by the Coen brothers into an Oscar-winning movie. Fans of the Coens would discover that the film's terse, absurdist dialogue, so characteristic of the brothers' work, was lifted straight from the novel.
"The Road," his stark tale of a father and son who roam a ravaged landscape, brought him his widest audience and highest acclaim. It won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was selected by Winfrey for her book club. In his Winfrey interview, McCarthy said that while typically he didn't know what generates the ideas for his books, he could trace "The Road" to a trip he took with his young son to El Paso, Texas, early in the decade. Standing at the window of a hotel in the middle of the night as his son slept nearby, he started to imagine what El Paso might look like 50 or 100 years in the future.
"I just had this image of these fires up on the hill ... and I thought a lot about my little boy," he said.
He told Winfrey he didn't care how many people read "The Road."
"You would like for the people that would appreciate the book to read it. But, as far as many, many people reading it, so what?" he said.
McCarthy dedicated the book to his son, John Francis, and said having a child as an older man "forces the world on you, and I think it's a good thing." The Pulitzer committee called his book "the profoundly moving story of a journey."
"It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, 'each the other's world entire,' are sustained by love," the citation read in part. "Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation."
After "The Road," little was heard from McCarthy over the next 15 years and his career was presumed over. But in 2022, Knopf made the startling announcement that it would release a pair of connected novels he had referred to in the past: "The Passenger" and "Stella Maris," narratives about a brother and sister, mutually obsessed siblings, and the legacy of their father, a physicist who had worked on atomic technology. "Stella Maris" was notable, in part, because it centered on a female character, an acknowledged weakness of McCarthy's.
"I don't pretend to understand women," he told Winfrey.
His first novel, "The Orchard Keeper" — written in Chicago while he was working as an auto mechanic — was published by Random House in 1965. His editor was Albert Erskine, Faulkner's longtime editor.
Other novels include "Outer Dark," published in 1968; "Child of God" in 1973; and "Suttree" in 1979. The violent "Blood Meridian," about a group of bounty hunters along the Texas-Mexico border murdering Indians for their scalps, was published in 1985.
His "Border Trilogy" books were set in the Southwest along the border with Mexico: "All the Pretty Horses" (1992) — a National Book Award winner that was turned into a feature film; "The Crossing" (1994), and "Cities of the Plain" (1998).
McCarthy said he was always lucky. He recalled living in a shack in Tennessee and running out of toothpaste, then going out and finding a toothpaste sample in the mailbox.
"That's the way my life has been. Just when things were really, really bleak, something would happen," said McCarthy, who won a MacArthur Fellowship — one of the so-called "genius grants" — in 1981.
In 2009, Christie's auction house sold the Olivetti typewriter he used while writing such novels as "The Road" and "No Country for Old Men" for $254,500. McCarthy, who bought the Olivetti for $50 in 1958 and used it until 2009, donated it so the proceeds could be used to benefit the Santa Fe Institute, a nonprofit interdisciplinary scientific research community. He once said he didn't know any writers and preferred to hang out with scientists.
The Southwestern Writers Collection at Texas State University-San Marcos purchased his archives in 2008, including correspondence, notes, drafts, proofs of 11 novels, a draft of an unfinished novel and materials related to a play and four screenplays.
McCarthy attended the University of Tennessee for a year before joining the Air Force in 1953. He returned to the school from 1957 to 1959, but left before graduating. As an adult, he lived around the Great Smoky Mountains before moving West in the late 1970s, eventually settling in Santa Fe.
His Knoxville boyhood home, long abandoned and overgrown, was destroyed by fire in 2009.
US administration argues against trial in case of Trump-era family separations at border with Mexico - By Anita Snow Associated Press
Despite President Joe Biden's loathing of his predecessor's practice of separating migrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border, his administration argued in federal court Tuesday that a lawsuit seeking money for five affected mothers and their children should be dismissed.
Justice Department attorney Phil MacWilliams told U.S. District Court Judge Susan R. Bolton the claims were improper and the case shouldn't be tried. He argued that the Yuma, Arizona-based Border Patrol agents involved used their discretion to separate the families, not a policy aimed at deterring migrants arrivals.
Attorney Diana Reiter, representing the families, argued the case should go to trial because the separations were part of a bigger policy under then-President Donald Trump aimed at preventing migrants from arriving at the border. She noted that because the women were never prosecuted the separations were unnecessary.
Bolton will issue a decision in the coming weeks.
The U.S. government's push to prevent a trial underscores the awkward position the Biden administration is now in as it grapples with its own problems managing migrant arrivals at the border.
The mothers and their children sued the U.S. government in 2019, seeking monetary compensation for the trauma they suffered the previous year when they were torn apart by the separation policy.
In 2021, the Biden administration participated quietly in settlement negotiations to end such lawsuits filed on behalf of parents and children who were forcibly separated under the Trump administration's zero-tolerance policy. But U.S. officials withdrew from such talks in December 2021 and said it would instead defend each case in court.
The negotiations in cases involving hundreds of plaintiffs were carried out for months until The Wall Street Journal reported in October 2019 that the government was considering paying about $450,000 to each person affected by the policy. The Associated Press later confirmed that figure was discussed.
About 5,500 children were forcibly removed from their parents in 2018 under Trump as his administration sought to stop an increase in people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, including migrants who showed up to seek asylum as the law allowed. Trump halted the family separation practice later that year amid widespread outrage.
Biden's administration since reversed some of Trump's actions designed to keep migrants from arriving at the border, including legally.
The American Immigration Council filed suit on behalf of the mothers and their children, who are also being represented by Reiter's firm, Arnold & Porter, as well as the National Immigrant Justice Center, National Immigration Litigation Alliance, and Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing, Feinberg & Lin.