‘Rust’ Armorer Loses Bid for New Trial, Dismissal of Charges
A bid from Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed to overturn her conviction for involuntary manslaughter over the accidental shooting death of the film’s cinematographer has been denied.
Santa Fe Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer on Monday upheld the guilty verdict, finding that charges shouldn’t be dismissed and that Gutierrez-Reed isn’t entitled to a new trial. The court rebuffed arguments that prosecutors suppressed evidence of a batch of ammunition, some of which matched the bullets found on the set of the production.
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The armorer’s legal maneuvering revolved around the dismissal of Alec Baldwin’s case by the judge, who denounced the prosecution for misconduct after concluding that it “intentionally and deliberately withheld” evidence from the defense. Lead special prosecutor Kari Morrissey, it found, not only repeatedly failed to fulfill discovery obligations but also gave “inconsistent” testimony related to the ammunition handed over by retired Arizona police officer Troy Teske. It was revealed that the rounds he provided had Starline brass casings with silver primers that matched the live bullet that killed Hutchins.
In Monday’s ruling, Sommer said that prosecutors didn’t hide evidence of the ammunition since it was available to a lawyer for Gutierrez-Reed in advance of and during trial. “Rather Teske and the ammunition in his possession were available to defendant, and yet defendant opted not to call Mr. Teske as a witness or seek to introduce the ammunition.”
Gutierrez-Reed’s lawyer Jason Bowles has said that he didn’t want to be in the “chain of custody” for the evidence “nor did I want there to be any allegation that I had anything to do with something nefarious with regard to those rounds.” If he was aware of the rounds, he said he would’ve advanced the theory that Seth Kenney, owner of a props and arms supplier that furnished the Rust production with ammunition and weapons, introduced the bullets onto the set.
Special prosecutor Morrissey has denied keeping the evidence from defense lawyers, maintaining that the first time she learned that the Teske-supplied ammunition looked similar to the rounds uncovered on the Rust set was in open court the day Baldwin’s case was dismissed. She questioned the integrity of the evidence Teske, a longtime friend of Reed, provided, explaining that the rounds in his possession were ruled out as the source of those found on the production after the ex-police officer sent Kenney a picture of the rounds he was holding for Reed. That photograph, she said, showed that the ammunition wasn’t a match.
A month before Gutierrez-Reed’s trial, Bowles similarly concluded the rounds Teske had weren’t a match and chose not to test them.
The court also found that the late disclosure of a supplemental report concerning the functionality of the firearm that discharged doesn’t warrant dismissal of the charges or a new trial. While prosecutors failed to in a timely manner inform the defense of the report, which was favorable to Gutierrez-Reed, it likely wouldn’t have changed the jury’s verdict, Sommer found.
In April, the court sentenced Gutierrez-Reed, who loaded the live round into the gun Baldwin was holding when it fired and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, to 18 months in prison for involuntary manslaughter. She was issued the maximum sentence by Sommer, who underscored the lack of remorse Gutierrez-Reed expressed from phone calls that were monitored while she awaited sentencing.
“In her own words, she’s said she didn’t need to be shaking dummies all the time,” Sommer said. She stressed, “You were the armorer, the one that stood between a safe weapon and a weapon that could kill someone. You alone turned a safe weapon into a lethal weapon. But for you, Ms. Hutchins would be alive, a husband would have his partner and a little boy would have his mother.”
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