The actor Alec Baldwin pleaded not guilty on Thursday to involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of the film “Rust” in New Mexico.
Mr. Baldwin has long denied any responsibility for the tragedy in October 2021, when a gun he was rehearsing with discharged, killing the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins. In the weeks since the Santa Fe County district attorney announced plans to charge him with involuntary manslaughter, lawyers for the actor have fought the prosecution, asking for the case’s special prosecutor to be disqualified and successfully arguing that one of the charges against him should be downgraded.
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the movie’s armorer, who was in charge of guns and ammunition on set, has also been charged with involuntary manslaughter. Ms. Gutierrez-Reed made her first virtual court appearance in the case on Friday; the judge did not ask her to enter a plea, but a lawyer representing her, Jason Bowles, said she planned to plead not guilty.
Mr. Baldwin asked for the court to waive his appearance at the hearing, but he entered his plea early in a court filing.
The judge in the case, Mary Marlowe Sommer, has allowed both defendants to remain out of detention without bail. A standard condition of release is that the defendant cannot possess any guns; Judge Marlowe Sommer allowed Ms. Gutierrez-Reed to keep a gun in her home because of threats to her safety since the high-profile shooting.
Mr. Baldwin, 64, and Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, 25, were each charged with two counts in the alternative, meaning that if they are convicted, a jury would decide which definition of involuntary manslaughter applies.
Prosecutors had initially applied a state law called a firearm enhancement, which carries a minimum prison sentence of five years. But after lawyers for both defendants asserted in court that the district attorney had charged them under a version of the law that did not exist at the time of the fatal shooting, prosecutors withdrew their use of the enhancement. Now the longest sentence the defendants could face is 18 months.
The shooting occurred while the production was setting up for a tight shot of Mr. Baldwin’s character drawing a revolver before a gunfight; the weapon discharged a live round, killing Ms. Hutchins and injuring the movie’s director, Joel Souza. Mr. Baldwin has said he was told that the gun was “cold,” meaning it did not contain any live rounds and was safe to hold, and noted that Ms. Hutchins had been directing him on where to point the weapon.
But prosecutors say Mr. Baldwin is partly to blame for the death, arguing in court papers that he flouted film safety standards on set, including by failing to receive sufficient firearms training and putting a finger on the trigger. Mr. Baldwin has said he did not pull the trigger before the gun went off, while prosecutors said an F.B.I. analysis had concluded that the trigger had to have been pulled.
Mr. Baldwin is facing several lawsuits over the episode. One of the plaintiffs, Ms. Hutchins’s widower, has agreed to settle and has been named an executive producer on “Rust,” which is scheduled to continue filming in Montana this spring.
The plans to restart production with Mr. Baldwin have set up an unusual situation amid criminal and civil proceedings. A defendant facing criminal charges are often not allowed to have contact with potential witnesses in the case, but the judge has allowed Mr. Baldwin to do so for the purpose of completing the movie.
The company behind the movie, Rust Movie Productions, has also been in negotiations with New Mexico’s Occupational Health and Safety Bureau, which issued a $136,793 penalty last year, the maximum allowed under state law, after it found that the company had demonstrated “plain indifference to the recognized hazards associated with the use of firearms on set.”
The company appealed the fine, but on Friday, it announced a settlement agreement with the agency. According to the agreement, the citation was downgraded from “willful-serious” to “serious,” and the company agreed to pay a penalty of $100,000. A lawyer for the company, Melina Spadone, said in a statement that settling was the best path forward toward resuming production and completing the film.
