Expert in Old West firearms says gun wouldn't malfunction in fatal shooting by Alec Baldwin - By Morgan Lee, Associated Press
Courtroom testimony by an independent gun expert Tuesday cast new doubt on Alec Baldwin's account that his gun went off without pulling the trigger in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer during a 2021 rehearsal on the set of the Western movie "Rust."
Baldwin has pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter with a trial scheduled for July in the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during a movie rehearsal on the outskirts of Santa Fe.
"Rust" armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed is currently on trial for her possible role in the death, pleading not guilty to charges of involuntary manslaughter and tampering with evidence. The armorer's trial has complex implications for Baldwin, who has not appeared in court.
On Tuesday, firearms expert Lucien Haag provided a lengthy demonstration of the workings of a single-action Colt revolver, like the gun held by Baldwin, and safety features that prevent a fully cocked hammer from striking and firing ammunition unless the trigger is depressed.
An FBI expert testified in court Monday that the revolver used by Baldwin was fully functional with safety features when it arrived at an FBI laboratory. The expert said he had to strike the fully-cocked gun with a mallet and break it in order for it to fire without depressing the trigger.
Haag, an Arizona-based consultant and expert in Old West firearms, testified Tuesday that he saw no evidence that the gun was broken or modified before it was tested by the FBI.
"Have you seen any evidence that the full-cock hammer or notch was filed or modified to allow faster shooting?" prosecutor Kari Morrissey asked. "No," replied Haag.
Haag and a colleague reassembled the gun with only one damaged part — the hammer — to demonstrate that safety features still functioned anyway — stopping the hammer under a variety of circumstances when the trigger was not depressed.
The jury watched a video of that experimentation with Baldwin's gun, as the hammer was pulled back and released multiple times — and caught each time by a safety notch before it could strike the ammunition chamber to fire the gun.
"If you're trying to cock the gun and you lose your grasp on it, the hammer falls — that safety notch captures it," Haag said.
The lead detective in Santa Fe on the "Rust" investigation said she was notified that the FBI would perform testing on Baldwin's gun that might damage or destroy the gun.
"We proceeded with the testing because Mr. Baldwin had made statements that he didn't pull the trigger. And I think his exact statement was that the gun just went off," said Alexandra Hancock, the detective for the Santa Fe County sheriff's office. "So we needed to figure out how to disprove that theory, or that statement. And that was the way that was proposed to us, and what the FBI could do."
Defense attorneys for Gutierrez-Reed say problems on the "Rust" set were beyond the control of their client and have pointed to shortcomings in the collection of evidence and debriefings after the fatal shooting. They say the main ammunition supplier to "Rust," Seth Kenney, wasn't properly investigated.
Hancock delved into her investigation of both Gutierrez-Reed and Kenney during extensive testimony Tuesday, while reviewing a series of videotaped interviews with Gutierrez-Reed on the "Rust" set in the immediate aftermath of the shooting on Oct. 21, 2021, later that day at an interrogation room and again weeks later. Gutierrez-Reed has not testified at trial, though she has been in attendance behind the defense table.
The initial video from a police lapel camera shows a crestfallen Gutierrez-Reed shortly after the fatal shooting.
"Welcome to the worst day of my of my life," the armorer told the detective after the shooting, but before she knew of Hutchins' death. "I can't believe Alec Baldwin was holding the gun."
Prosecutors highlighted inconsistencies in the videotaped statements by Gutierrez-Reed, debunking her claim to have inspected all rounds in Baldwin's gun prior to the shooting by shaking them for a telltale rattle. That shake can identify inert dummy rounds where gunpowder has been replaced by BBs, but investigators say at least one round contained no BBs and was marked as a dummy by a hole in the side.
Hancock testified that she investigated Kenney initially as the potential source of live ammunition, which is expressly prohibited on movie sets, but found out that he never went to the set of "Rust" and that a search of his property in Albuquerque turned up live rounds that didn't resemble live rounds later discovered on the set of "Rust," including the round that killed Hutchins.
Meanwhile, Gutierrez-Reed told investigators in November 2021 that she retrieved loose ammunition from a bag left over from work on a prior film, checked that they were dummy rounds and brought the rounds in two boxes to the "Rust" set. She said that ammunition first sat in her car for two weeks.
Questioned about any possible sabotage by cast or crew members, Gutierrez-Reed dismissed the idea and said no one there was "that malicious." Six members of the film crew walked off the job the night before the fatal shooting in a dispute involving working conditions.
Gutierrez-Reed also previously told investigators including Hancock that Baldwin talked on his phone during a firearms training session for "Rust," indicating he may have been distracted.
Defense attorneys did not yet have the opportunity to cross-examine Hancock on Tuesday.
Prosecutors argue that Gutierrez-Reed is to blame for bringing live ammunition on set and that she treated basic safety protocols for weapons as optional. They say six live rounds found on the "Rust" set bear identical characteristics — and don't match live rounds seized from the movie's supplier in Albuquerque.
APS announces new environmental STEM program to train future farmers—KUNM news, Albuquerque Journal
Albuquerque Public Schools unveiled Tuesday a new free K–12 magnet program based in environmental STEM education largely focused on agriculture and cultivating future farmers.
In a news release, APS said four schools in the south valley have been chosen to host the new pathway program, called “Sustaining the Future,” which will use inquiry based and hands-on learning experiences.
APS officials told the Albuquerque Journal that a 12.8 million grant will fund the program, which should support about 2,500 students, as well as paying for training for teachers, student curricula, hands-on equipment, and new facilities.
Officials said the program is designed to encourage students to pursue environment and climate science, and will provide the opportunities for students to learn coding, and attain certificates from partnered universities in everything from sustainable farming, to clean energy technology and even drone flying.
Though the full program will be rolled out over the next five years, classes will begin next school year at Los Padillas and Mountain View elementary schools, Polk Middle School and Rio Grande High School.
Bernalillo County plans to increase staffing at juvenile jail following Christmas Day disturbance - Elise Kaplan, City Desk ABQ
This story was originally published by City Desk ABQ
In the wake of a “large disturbance”at the Bernalillo County Youth Services Center — a juvenile detention center — on Christmas, the county has developed a plan to boost staffing, training, morale and emergency planning.
The plan also includes hiring a director by April 1, since the previous director, Michael Ferstl, retired last week. He had been on a personal leave of absence since September, according to a county spokesperson.
“We currently have two acting directors with Deputy County Manager Greg Perez at the helm,” said spokesperson Elizabeth Hamm in an email.
Hamm said the staff will get more training on verbal de-escalation, first aid and CPR. A six-page planning document prepared by the county also calls for morale boosting efforts — including pay incentives, weekly visits by a crisis response clinician, a newsletter and a Valentine’s day goodie bag for the employees.
On Christmas, about 13 teenagers barricaded themselves in a cell block, demanding chicken wings and falsely claiming they had taken hostages. The stand-off lasted for about five hours and officials say it cost $100,000 in damages. Three of the juveniles were charged in relation to the incident.
In early January, parents of the jailed juveniles released their own demands, including that their children get healthy food served on time, clean laundry, access to school programs and books, and the end of strip searches and prolonged confinement.
The county’s long-term efforts include requesting $1 million for improving the facility and outsourcing laundry to a commercial vendor.
The average time that teenagers are staying in the facility has increased over the past several years — from 20 days in Fiscal Year 2019 to 40 days in Fiscal Year 2023 — according to the planning document. The number of teenagers who have been locked up for more than a year has also doubled in that time — from seven to 16. Hamm said there are 45 juveniles in the facility right now.
The planning document identifies a shortage of staff as “the highest concern” and states that the facility lost many employees during the pandemic due to many factors, including retirement.
“The Bernalillo County Youth Services Center is currently in the company of other juvenile and adult facilities around the nation who are facing shortages and lack of interest in the field of corrections and public safety,” the document states.
Hamm said there are 35 employees at the YSC right now but by March 26 there will be 64. The ultimate goal is to have 80.
In a statement, Deputy County Manager Perez said the Christmas Day incident was a “wake-up call.” He said many of the county’s efforts to improve conditions are already in place.
“We understand changes are needed so residents and staff are always safe,” Perez said. “We have had difficulty with staffing and are addressing that through hiring events and increased training sessions.”
County closer to spending millions in opioid funds - Damon Scott, City Desk ABQ
This story was originally published by City Desk ABQ
The latest round of opioid settlement funds — $18 million — has made its way to Bernalillo County. Payments total $22.6 million so far. The funds come from historic settlements between states and companies like Walgreens, CVS, Walmart, Kroger, Albertsons and others due to their alleged involvement in the opioid epidemic.
According to the New Mexico Department of Health, the state has one of the highest opioid overdose rates in the country — 11th highest in 2020. The DOH said two of three drug overdose deaths in New Mexico in 2020 involved an opioid, whether prescription, heroin or fentanyl; and in 2020, the state’s fentanyl-involved death rate was seven times the rate in 2016.
Bernalillo County has spent $407,000 so far from a $4.6 million funding round last year — $383,000 on marketing campaigns and $24,000 on a buprenorphine program. Buprenorphine, also known as Suboxone, is used in medication-assisted treatment to help people reduce or quit opioid use.
However, Kathy Korte, the county’s chief of government affairs, said spending has since halted.
The board of County Commissioners and the Albuquerque City Council both passed resolutions late last year stating that settlement funds shouldn’t be spent until a city-county strategic plan was in place. Korte said the city of Albuquerque has received about $25 million in settlement money so far.
County officials disclosed late last week that they are in the process of finalizing a contract with global health organization Vital Strategies — through a Bloomberg overdose prevention initiative grant — to produce such a plan. Vital Strategies previously worked with the county on its fentanyl awareness campaign.
“Their proposal would be derived from a landscape analysis of the efforts at the city and the county — a strategic look at how we utilize this funding,” Korte said. “Where are there gaps, and where should we focus our collective efforts?”
Korte said her colleague at the city is Gilbert Ramírez, the director of Health, Housing & Homelessness and the two are tasked with ensuring that the city-county resolutions are administered.
Ramírez wasn’t immediately available for comment on the potential Vital Strategies contract.
TIMELINE, FRUSTRATIONS
Korte said the hope is that the Vital Strategies contract will be approved by Bernalillo County Commissioners and the Albuquerque City Council sometime in March, which would allow work to begin in April. She said Vital Strategies would then have until November to present a plan. If the plan is approved, the county and city would implement the plan in 2025 and 2026.
Meanwhile, members of the county’s addiction treatment advisory board (ATAB) — while supportive of the city-county resolutions — have expressed concern that plans aren’t moving fast enough, and that the county’s communication has been lacking at times. The board was created by commissioners and consists of medical professionals and addiction specialists who make addiction treatment and harm reduction policy recommendations for county programs.
“Can you communicate to the commissioners the sense of urgency about a need to have a coherent plan that is implemented? Because it seems like this has been going on for quite awhile,” said board member and clinical psychologist Barbara McCrady to Pam Acosta at a Feb. 19 ATAB meeting.
Acosta is a Behavioral Health Initiative senior program manager at the county.
Board member Dr. Anjali Taneja, a family physician and executive director of the nonprofit Casa de Salud New Mexico, agreed with McCrady.
“The strategic planning process has been delayed for more than a year,” she said. “That delay means that opioid settlement funds don’t have a framework to follow or strategy to follow. There’s a tension with the fact that there’s a lot of money and an awful lot of need.”
Taneja added that ATAB members had previously requested that commissioners be more involved with the board.
“It feels that sometimes items from this board don’t get to the commissioners,” she said.
According to Korte, the process does take time, but officials want to make sure, for example, that the funds aren’t being used on duplicative city-county services.
“The wheels of government turn a little bit slower maybe than in the private sector,” she said. “We are completely following the resolutions to do exactly what the County Commission and City Council has tasked us with doing.”
Korte said officials also want to ensure that any funded programs and initiatives have staying power.
“You don’t want to just spend, spend, spend, and then the money’s gone and what do you have to show for it?” she said. “I can completely respect that our elected officials want to make sure that whatever we are spending this money on, it is making an impact and it has a means of being sustainable. Whatever we do has to be sustained when the money is gone.”
Biden administration taps $366M to fund clean energy for Native American tribes and rural areas - By Sophie Austin, Associated Press/Report For America
The federal government will fund 17 projects across the U.S. to expand access to renewable energy on Native American reservations and in other rural areas, the Biden administration announced Tuesday.
The $366 million plan will pay for solar, battery storage and hydropower projects in sparsely populated regions where electricity can be costly and unreliable. The money comes from a $1 trillion infrastructure law President Joe Biden signed in 2021.
U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm called the announcement "historic" at a clean energy tribal summit in Southern California that began Tuesday.
"This is the largest amount that the Department of Energy has awarded to tribes for energy projects," she said.
About a fifth of homes in the Navajo Nation — located in northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico and southeastern Utah — do not have access to electricity, the U.S. Department of Energy estimates. Nearly a third of homes that have electricity on Native American reservations in the U.S. report monthly outages, according to the Biden administration.
The announcement comes as Native tribes in Nevada and Arizona fight to protect their lands and sacred sites amid the Biden administration's expansion of renewable energy. It also comes days after federal regulators granted Native American tribes more authority to block hydropower projects on their land.
The Biden administration will only secure funding for the 17 projects after negotiating with project applicants, federal officials said.
Chéri Smith, president of the nonprofit Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy, called the announcement "bittersweet" and said it will take more money and support from the government and philanthropic groups to see the projects come to fruition.
"What these announcements do is they build hope for communities," Smith said. "Translating these ambitions into tangible outcomes — we still have a ways to go."
The projects span across 20 states and involve 30 tribes. They include $30 million to provide energy derived from plants to wildfire-prone communities in the Sierra Nevada in California, $32 million to build solar and hydropower for a Native American tribe in Washington state and $27 million to construct a hydroelectric plant to serve a tribal village in Alaska.
In 2019, the Hopi Tribe in Arizona lost jobs and a longstanding energy source when a massive coal-fired power plant shut down after nearly 50 years. It was a significant source of revenue for the Navajo and Hopi tribes.
The Biden administration plans to allocate more than $9 million for a project led by Arizona State University in partnership with the Hopi to build solar panels and battery storage for the tribe.
Kristen Parrish, a professor at Arizona State University's School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, said that the project will provide a reliable source of power to tribal citizens.
"Even more important than the fact that it's cleaner is the fact that it's reliable," Parrish said of the project.
The Department of Energy also announced funding for a $57 million project to provide solar power and battery storage for up to 175 community health centers in rural parts of the Southeast, including in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina.
The idea for the project stemmed from power outages in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria in 2017 that hampered health care professionals' ability to do their work, said Ben Money, the senior vice president for population health at the nonprofit National Association of Community Health Centers. People living in rural areas sometimes only have access to one health care center in their region, Money said.
"If the power goes out or there's a natural or man-made disaster, those community residents are more dependent upon that community health center site than, perhaps, residents in communities where they may have other options," he said.
US asylum restriction aimed at limiting claims has little impact given strained border budget - By Elliot Spagat, Associated Press
Inside giant white tents that house about 1,000 migrants near Tucson International Airport, Border Patrol agents demonstrate clockwork efficiency to release detainees within two days of arrest with orders to appear in immigration courts at their final destinations. Agents transmit information from the field to colleagues who prepare court papers while migrants are bused hours away to a processing center, minimizing time in custody.
Notably missing from the operations hub in the busiest corridor for illegal crossings into the U.S. are asylum officers who do initial screenings, which are intended to weed out weak claims that don't meet narrowly prescribed grounds for seeking protection, such as race, religion and political opinion.
Asylum officers were instructed nearly a year ago to apply a higher screening standard on those who cross the border illegally after passing though another country, such as Mexico, but they are too understaffed to have much impact. The Biden administration hails the higher standard as a cornerstone of its border policy in legal challenges, but its application in only a small percentage of arrests shows how budgets can fail to match ambitions.
Strained budgets continue to loom large as the White House again considers sweeping measures to limit asylum at the border.
The failure of a $20 billion spending plan on border security this month has caused the administration to assess its priorities. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, facing a $700 million hole this year, is considering cutting the number of detention beds from 38,000 to 22,000 and facilitating fewer deportation flights. These possible steps were first reported by The Washington Post and confirmed to The Associated Press by a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.
The failed spending package crafted by Senate negotiators would have given $4 billion to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, including to add 4,338 asylum officers to screen applicants and make final decisions on claims — more than four times current staffing.
Arrests for illegal border crossings from Mexico plunged 42%, to the second-lowest monthly rate of Joe Biden's presidency, a month after the higher standard replaced COVID-19 pandemic-related asylum restrictions. The rule "is working as intended and has already significantly reduced encounters at the border," Blas Nuñez-Neto, assistant homeland security secretary for border and immigration policy, said in a court filing at the time.
Asylum-seekers subject to tougher screenings had a 59% pass rate through September, down from 85% in the five years before the pandemic, Nuñez-Neto said in another court filing that called the policy a success.
While that suggests the policy has made a difference, its scope has been limited. Officers interviewed only 57,700 migrants under the new rule through September, according to Nuñez-Neto. That represents only about 15% of the nearly 365,500 migrants released by Border Patrol from June to September with notices to appear in immigration court.
The Department of Homeland Security declined this week to provide more recent numbers. It insists that the higher screening standard is working as intended, while acknowledging it has failed to keep pace with unprecedented migration flows and calling on Congress to adequately fund the efforts.
Asylum officers did more than 130,000 screenings, known as "credible fear interviews," at the border during the 2023 budget year, which was more than double the year before. But more than 600,000 migrants were released with notices to appear in immigration court in that time and another 300,000 with orders to report to an immigration office for a court date, a practice that has largely ceased.
Mbala Giodi, a migrant from Angola, waited hours after crossing the border from Mexico in the mountains east of San Diego for agents to take him to a holding station, where he spent two days. He was released at a San Diego transit center and told he would have a chance to explain his reasons for fleeing his southern Africa homeland in court, with an initial hearing scheduled in New York in May.
"There wasn't much problem," said Giodi, 42, who calls himself a victim of government repression for being a student protestor in Angola.
To even put the higher screening standard into effect, Citizenship and Immigration Services added about 1,000 staff to assist an existing 850 or so asylum officers, training former asylum officers and other employees for short stints, said Michael Knowles, spokesman for the National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council. The union represents workers at the agency, which also oversees work visas, green cards, citizenship applications and asylum claims that originate away from the border.
Assigning so many employees to border cases extended wait times for other services, he said. Weekend overtime was mandatory, as was holiday work.
"We're so overwhelmed and there's so much pressure," Knowles said. "Part of the border crisis is they didn't hire enough of us to do the work."
A lack of resources hampered another Biden policy that took effect in June 2022, empowering asylum officers to make final rulings on claims, not just screenings. It aimed to ease the workload of immigration judges, whose backlog of more than 3 million cases has allowed asylum-seekers with weak claims to stay in the United States for years — with eligibility for work permits — while their cases wind through the system.
Fewer than 6,000 asylum cases had been decided under the 2022 policy by the end of September.
"That is a very important program that got very little support," Knowles said.
Advocates for asylum-seekers have sued over application of the higher screening standard. They argue that it unfairly penalizes those who cross the border illegally while a heavily oversubscribed online appointment system, called CBP One, is virtually the only way to come through an official port of entry. The standard remains in effect while a judge's ruling declaring the policy illegal is under appeal. The case may reach the Supreme Court.
While migration flows dropped immediately after the higher standard took effect, border arrests increased in five of the last six months of 2023 as migrants and smugglers adjusted to realities on the ground, peaking at an all-time high of 250,000 in December.