womble wrote:So can we strap him to a chair and electrocute him now
Sounds good to me, that's what he'd be baying for if it were one of us
I really can't see any possible way he can avoid at least some degree of culpability for this. He had a firearm, he aimed it at a person, he pulled the trigger - none of those actions are anybody else's fault but his. It's not relevant where the firearm or the ammo came from, who handled the firearm beforehand, or who was in charge of safety. Those things will be relevant during civil litigation for sure.
With the information that has already come to light, I haven't seen himself or any witness or supporter claim that he didn't fire the shot.
And I don't think any evidence can explain how a live round was able to be in the firearm, without him being negligent in at least some way.
If somebody else mixed up the blanks with live rounds, his _required_ inspection during loading would've showed it.
If he screwed that up somehow, how the bullet hitting somebody while he was deliberately aiming the firearm away from them occurred is extremely difficult to explain - a ricochet perhaps? Still his responsibility not to be aiming at a surface that could cause a ricochet, even of blank fragments.
There is one thing I have seen missed in the discussions of the safe handling requirements broadly used on sets across the world that does concern me.
Mixing of dummy rounds and blanks in the _same_ firearm used in different takes is stupid, and likely negligent. A dummy round is a complete cartridge minus the powder and primer. Probably used hundreds or thousands of times before. Using dummy rounds in a firearm carries the inherent risk of a bullet coming adrift and dropping into the bore. Anybody that has measured the lands in a firearm knows that it doesn't require very much pressure at all for the rifling to retain the bullet. It's a possibility as I have not seen anybody include in the safety checks, ensuring that the dummies are removed _and inspected_ before being re-stored. It's possible they just dump the chambers straight into a bucket without looking for empty case mouths, or visually inspecting that the bore is clear before a firearm is loaded with anything (I have seen mention of inspecting the chamber but nobody so far has mentioned bore inspection as a safety protocol). Using that same firearm in another scene but with live blanks is exactly the same as loading a live round in the first chamber (I have never heard of a bullet remaining in a cylinder chamber, but I guess that's possible also). The culpability is still going to come down on him as he is one of the "brass" in charge of ensuring his staff are doing the right thing, but such a situation _might_ reduce the severity of the manslaughter charge, perhaps.
Something Schneider mentioned that made my jaw drop, was that often blanks use "fired" primers "so you can see they've been struck". I'm sure all of us have experienced a "dud" round at least once, where a primer is indented but does not ignite. Often, simply hitting the primer again is enough to fire it, that's why many firearms allow re-cocking without extracting the current cartridge, as with double-action semi-autos. Seeing a dimple in a primer is no guarantee that that primer is actually inert. If an armourer is depriming and resizing his "fired" blanks, a "fired but live" primer is dumped into the primer bucket with a dimple in it...where it is likely to then be recovered and used to make the next round of dummies... You now have a "dummy" with a bullet and a live primer, but no powder, more than sufficient to lodge a bullet into the bore, if the bore is not inspected before it is next loaded, but also insignificant enough that it might not be noticed by an actor "firing" the dummies during a noisy scene - it's not uncommon for extremely experienced shooters to miss a primer squib occasionally and launch another bullet down the tube behind it.
Both of these situations have occurred on sets in the past already, so I really would've thought they would be high on the list of safety protocols. Perhaps they are but people being interview simply haven't mentioned them?