BREAKING: ‘Midnight Rider’ Director & Producers to be Charged with Manslaughter

Written by Jack Gattanella.

Following the death of camera assistant Sarah Jones on the set of Midnight Rider, the Greg Allman biopic, the director Randall Miller and producers Jody Savin and Jay Serdish have been brought up on charges of involuntary manslaughter and criminal trespass.

The charges were released Thursday morning in Wayne County, Georgia court, and the indictment came down from a grand jury following a push from the D.A. In February, the filmmakers tried to get a shot for a dream sequence in the film on train tracks going by the Altahama river  that they did not have total permission for (there was permission to film on the land nearby, but not on the actual tracks).  A train came that was unexpected to all of the crew, and there was not enough time to clear the tracks.

The train injured several other crew members.  Jones, 27, was flung in the direction of the train and died instantly.  (There are more details, all in a harrowing article from The Hollywood Reporter). Since then, Miller and the producers on the film have been taken to task for what should have been common sense, to make proper precautions, permission, and timing for the train schedule. “According to the CSX (Railway company that owns the tracks),” Sgt. Ben Robertson wrote in a report, “the production company had previously been denied permission to film on the trestle, and there was electronic correspondence to verify that fact.” Six civil suits have already been brought against the filmmakers, production has shut down, and the star of the film William Hurt – who was also on set that day and saw the accident – has stepped down from the title role. These are the first charges brought in this case, and involuntary manslaughter charges carry up to a ten year sentence in Georgia.

The film was to be released by Open Road films, but the primary responsibility would lie with the production company which is run by Miller and Savin and their Unclaimed Freight company. According to most involved, Jones was not high up on the totem pole in the production as a camera assistant, but was not protected properly by production standards.  As another DP, John Sheeren put it, “Everybody started in the lowest position in their classification at one point or another, and everybody knows how powerless that position is.”  In the months since her passing, however, the support for safety on sets and in memorium of Jones has gone wide and far across social media, with the phrase “WE ARE ALL SARAH JONES” a refrain that can even be found on t-shirts and umbrellas.

No statement has been made yet on this development from Miller or the producers involved; more on this case as it develops.