SANTA FE>> A defense attorney told jurors Wednesday that the shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was an “unspeakable tragedy” but that “Alec Baldwin committed no crime; he was an actor acting.”

Baldwin is on trial for involuntary manslaughter.

Baldwin’s lawyer Alex Spiro emphasized in his opening statement in a Santa Fe courtroom that Baldwin, on the set of the film “Rust,” where Hutchins was killed in October 2021, did exactly what actors always do.

“I don’t have to tell you any more about this, because you’ve all seen gunfights in movies,” Spiro said.

Special prosecutor Erlinda Ocampo Johnson said in her opening statement that before the shooting, Baldwin skipped safety checks and recklessly handled a revolver.

“The evidence will show that someone who played make-believe with a real gun and violated the cardinal rules of firearm safety is the defendant, Alexander Baldwin,” Ocampo Johnson said.

Spiro replied that “these cardinal rules, they’re not cardinal rules on a movie set.”

“On a movie set, safety has to occur before a gun is placed in an actor’s hand,” Spiro told the jury.

The first witness to take the stand was the first law enforcement officer to arrive at Bonanza Creek Ranch after the shooting. Video shown in the courtroom from the body camera of Nicholas LeFleur, then a Santa Fe county sheriff’s deputy, captured the frantic efforts to save Hutchins, who looked unconscious as several people attended to her and gave her an oxygen mask. In the courtroom, Baldwin looked at the screen somberly as it played.

Later in the video, LeFleur can be seen telling Baldwin not to speak to the other potential witnesses, but Baldwin repeatedly does.

When special prosecutor Kari Morrissey asked whether the sheriff’s deputy handled the situation ideally he responded, “Probably not. But it’s what happened.” Spiro tried to establish that neither LeFleur nor the trial’s second witness, former sheriff’s Lt. Tim Benavidez, treated the scene as a place where a major crime had occurred. Benavidez, who collected the revolver after the shooting, acknowledged that he was careful with it, as much for safety reasons as anything else, but did not wear gloves or take meticulous forensic precautions as he might have done for a homicide investigation.

Ocampo Johnson in her opening walked the jurors through the events leading up to Hutchins’ death. She said on that day, Baldwin declined multiple opportunities for standard safety checks with armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed before the rehearsal in the small church about 20 miles from the courthouse where Hutchins, “a vibrant 42-year-old rising star,” was killed. She said Baldwin instead “did his own thing.”