Last October, Alec Baldwin shot and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.  The bullet passed through Hutchins’ body and wounded director Joel Souza.

Whose fault was it?

Alec Baldwin insists it was not his fault; somebody handed him a gun and told him it was unloaded. According to Baldwin, assistant director Dave Halls inspected the gun to determine that it was unloaded, declared that the gun was “cold” (unloaded), and handed it to Baldwin.  (Halls, through his lawyer, has denied this.)  The “armorer,” Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, was supposed to be responsible for verifying that all the firearms were safe.  Her lawyer has opined that somebody put a live round into the gun as intentional sabotage, possibly because of the bad will on the set.  (Several crew members had left the set “on strike” shortly before the shooting.)  Hutchins and Souza positioned themselves in front of the gun, some two feet away, which was not a safe thing for them to do.  Firearms safety rules apply to all guns, whether loaded or unloaded, precisely because so many accidents occur with guns that are believed to be unloaded.

So, the first question is, “Who is responsible?”  The answer is “Possibly – probably — more than one person.”  There is a tendency to want to point a finger at one culprit, but in the real world, there is such a thing as “contributory negligence,” wherein several people contribute to a bad outcome.  If a drunk driver crosses the center line and kills a mother and her young child who is riding in the back seat, the assumption is that the drunk driver is at fault.  But what if the mother was texting on her cell phone at the time, and not watching the road?  And what if she was not wearing a seat belt, and the child was not in a car seat?  Then a jury would likely find that both the drunk driver and the mother were each partly at fault.

So it is with the Baldwin shooting.  The fault may lie partly with Baldwin, partly with the director, partly with the assistant director, partly with the person who put the live ammunition into the gun, and partly with who knows who else?  There does not have to be just one person who is 100% responsible.  In this case, most likely it was a “tragedy of errors.”

The next question is, “Did Baldwin pull the trigger?”  Baldwin swore to George Stephanopoulos that he did not.  Halls’ lawyer says that Halls also swears that Baldwin did not pull the trigger.

Baldwin told Stephanopoulos: “So, I take the gun, and I start to cock the gun. I’m not going to pull the trigger,” he added. “And I cock the gun; I go, ‘Can you see that? Can you see that? Can you see that?’ And then I let go of the hammer of the gun, and the gun goes off.”

“I let go of the hammer of the gun – the gun goes off,” he repeated.

That cannot happen, unless the gun is seriously broken mechanically.  If the gun is broken, that will be easy to demonstrate by the forensic examiners, and easy to demonstrate in court.  If an actual chunk of metal has been broken off, it will be apparent on inspection, and the accident will be easy to replicate in the lab.

More likely, though, Baldwin did have his finger on the trigger.  That does not mean that Baldwin is lying.  What people remember is often very different from what actually happened, which is why witness evidence is so often unreliable.  It is common for people to swear, under oath, that there were three bank robbers wearing red hats armed with shotguns, when the surveillance video shows there were two bank robbers wearing blue hats armed with pistols.

In 2014, New York police officer Peter Liang was searching a dark apartment building, when he was startled by a loud noise, and fired a shot that penetrated a couple of walls and killed a bystander, Akai Gurley.  Liang testified in court – under oath – that he did not pull the trigger.  The forensic experts tested the gun and determined that the gun could not fire without pulling the trigger.  Liang was convicted and went to jail.  Did he commit perjury?  No, because he testified truthfully — not about what actually happened, but about what he vividly and honestly remembered.

As the psychology experts say, “It is not that the witness lied, but that the witness’ brain lied to him.”  Liang’s brain lied to him.

Baldwin’s gun, the Pietta replica of the Colt 1873 Single Action Army, cannot be fired by pulling the hammer back and releasing it, as Baldwin reported.  There are four “clicks” or “safety notches” that will catch the hammer if it is pulled and released.  The only way that gun can fire is by cocking the hammer – and pressing the trigger.

Let’s give Baldwin the benefit of the doubt.  He genuinely believes his finger was not on the trigger.  He is not lying – his brain is lying to him.