Alec Baldwin’s trial for involuntary manslaughter over the tragic death of Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins began one week in July, and by the end of that week it was dismissed. Alec’s defense team learned that the prosecution had withheld evidence. That is illegal, and the judge read the prosecution for filth over it. So the judge dismissed the trial with prejudice, meaning Alec can never be recharged (though that hasn’t seemed to fully register with the prosecution). Watching these events closely was the defense team for Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the Rust armorer who was convicted of the same charge earlier this year. Days after Alec’s dismissal, Hannah’s lawyers filed a motion for her conviction to be dismissed or at least retried, and for Hannah to be released from prison where she’s serving an 18-month sentence. Now a ruling has been rendered and Hannah lost on all counts: no dismissal, no retrial, no release from prison.
A New Mexico judge on Monday denied “Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed’s request for a new trial and upheld her involuntary manslaughter conviction for the 2021 death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
Gutierrez Reed was ordered to remain in custody to serve the remainder of her 18-month sentence.
The decision comes almost three years after Hutchins, 42, was killed by a live round of ammunition fired from a prop gun held by actor Alec Baldwin on the set of the western film on October 21, 2021. The film’s director was also injured in the shooting.
Gutierrez Reed, who as armorer was in charge of firearms on the movie set, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in March.
At her trial, prosecutors argued she repeatedly violated safety protocol and was negligent in performing her duties, allowing six live rounds on to the set. Her defense attorney argued she was scapegoated for the safety failures of film set management and other crew members.
Baldwin was also charged with involuntary manslaughter and had pleaded not guilty.
At his trial in July, prosecutors alleged he violated the “cardinal rules of firearm safety” by pointing the prop gun at Hutchins and pulling the trigger, while the defense blamed the film’s armorer and the first assistant director for allowing a real bullet to be loaded into Baldwin’s prop gun.
But just days after his trial began, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer threw out the charges and ruled prosecutors did not properly turn over evidence to the defense. The judge called the withholding of evidence “intentional and deliberate” and dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be brought again.
Assistant film director David Halls took a plea deal in 2023 for his role in the shooting. He pleaded no contest to one count of negligent use of a deadly weapon and was sentenced to six months of unsupervised probation.
In their July motion, Gutierrez Reed’s attorneys had cited “egregious prosecutorial misconduct” and multiple allegations of “severe and ongoing discovery violations by the state” as the grounds for their request for a new trial or dismissal of her conviction.
While I respect the fact that a defense attorney is going to play all the cards they have to help a client, I’m not surprised by this outcome. The jurors in Hannah’s trial have said that her inconsistent safety checks were a driving force in their finding her guilty; the evidence withheld in Alec’s trial was not going to exonerate Hannah because the truth is she did her job poorly. But as we got more info on the evidence that was withheld, it just made it even more brazen that Hannah thought she could use it in her favor. Here’s what happened: Earlier this year Troy Teske, a former police officer and friend of Hannah’s father, turned over two dozen rounds to the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department because he thought they “might” be related to the fatal Rust shooting (2.5 years after the accident). Then a crime scene technician put the rounds into evidence storage, but it was mistakenly filed under the wrong case number. Most of us started pinging when Teske was identified as a family friend, but the real kicker came later when it was revealed Teske was scheduled to be a witness in Hannah’s trial, but her lawyers ultimately decided not to call him.
So in conclusion: the rejection of Hannah’s motion this week is confirmation that no, you cannot claim evidence was withheld that unfairly impacted your defense… when we know you had been considering using that evidence at your own trial!
Photos credit: Getty and screenshots via YouTube/ABC
Maybe I didn’t follow this case closely enough, but how did they think those two dozen random rounds would have helped her case? If it was her father’s friend who turned in the evidence (that he held for 2 years??) then I assume he thought it would help Hannah. There never should have been any live rounds on set, right?
This is what confuses me too. If anything, a friend of he defendant holding onto evidence looks worse.
She really just doesn’t want to accept any responsibility for doing her job so badly that it literally cost a woman her life.
I don’t understand how it’s accepted as valid evidence at all. I haven’t seen anything that explains how a box of billets from two years prior that someone connected to the case brought to the police has anything to do with anything. Unless they have people’s names engraved on them I don’t see what they could be evidence of.
Alec got lucky that the prosecution was acting in bad faith, it seems.
As “armorer” she is 100% responsible for live bullets on set when there absolutely should not have been any live ammunition. Her sole responsibility was to be sure that those weapons were ready and safe to use. She failed and a woman (wife, mother, friend) is dead. She got off so easy. She should shut her mouth and thank her lucky stars her sentence is so short. Too many people in this world refuse to take responsibility for their actions.
THIS!! ALL OF THIS!
Lady needs to just serve her 18months and be thankful that’s all she got for directly causing the death of another person.
I can understand her lawyer taking a shot at this after what happened with Baldwin, but I’m in agreement with others here, if she was ultimately responsible for the on set weapons, and failed to do her job which led to a death, she has responsibility and should just serve the remainder of her sentence.
18 months really doesn’t seem like a long sentence to me, but if her sentence length had been mitigated, it wouldn’t have mitigated her responsibility for causing the director’s death. Her face and attitude don’t strike any chords of sympathy in me. In contrast, Alec Baldwin seems devastated by what happened. He was trying to get off too, but he seems genuinely sorry. This girl is very unsympathetic.