Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, armorer on the set of ‘Rust,’ found guilty of involuntary manslaughter
The jury believes that the gunsmith failed to respect safety protocols when handling weapons, which could have prevented live bullets from finding their way on the set of the Alec Baldwin western
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the armorer on the set of the movie Rust, starring Alec Baldwin, was found guilty Wednesday of the involuntary manslaughter of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. The jury in Santa Fe, New Mexico, released its verdict on the tragic events that occurred on October 21, 2021, during the filming of the western. That morning, Gutierrez-Reed, the inexperienced daughter of a seasoned weapons consultant, was in charge of the revolver with which Alec Baldwin accidentally shot director of photography Hutchins during a rehearsal. Gutierrez-Reed, who could be sentenced to up to 18 months in prison, will appeal the ruling, her lawyers indicated. Baldwin, who was also a producer of the movie, faces a trial in July on charges of involuntary manslaughter.
Gutierrez-Reed, 26, is the second person to be convicted in the Rust case after David Halls, the assistant director, last year accepted a charge of negligent handling of a firearm. She had earlier pleaded not guilty to the crime of reckless homicide. The prosecution had also charged her with tampering with evidence for allegedly hiding a bag of suspected drugs. The jury, which deliberated for two and a half hours, acquitted her of that charge. In addition to the sentence, Gutierrez-Reed was fined $5,000.
The two-week trial focused on Gutierrez-Reed’s role in handling the gun. The weapon, a replica of an 1873 Pietta revolver, was chambered with a real bullet. Jurors told the press that the then 24-year-old gunsmith failed to respect safety protocols. “[She] never checked the rounds, to pull them out to shake them. I mean, if she’d have done that this wouldn’t have happened,” Alberto Sanchez, one of the 12 jurors, told reporters outside the courthouse.
Dozens of experts and witnesses provided testimony for the prosecution. Joel Souza, the film’s director, who was wounded by the same bullet that killed Hutchins, gave his version of events for the first time in public. “I knew something had got me,” he recounted. Souza was rushed to a hospital, but told medical staff that he ruled out the damage had been caused by a live round. Hollywood prohibits live bullets on set, he said. “I kept saying, ‘You don’t understand. No, no, no, this was a movie set. That’s not possible. You don’t get it,’ and, ‘It’s just not possible. It’s just not possible there’s a live round,’” he said from the stand in an account broadcast on Court TV. Doctors subsequently showed Souza an X-ray of a bullet lodged in his back.
Throughout the trial, the prosecution blamed Gutierrez-Reed for allowing live bullets to arrive on set. The prosecution, led by Kari Morrissey, showed a picture of the gun shop in the early days of filming, before the supplier sent the main shipment of blanks to the set, to prove it. This point was dismissed by the defense, who relied on testimony from an FBI agent, who pointed out that real bullets cannot be distinguished from fake ones with the naked eye. Police found at least six live bullets on the set at the Bonanza Creek Ranch in New Mexico. “This was a game of Russian roulette every time an actor had a gun with dummies,” Morrissey told the jury during closing arguments. The prosecution, however, did not prove how the real bullets found their way onto the set.
The strategy of Gutierrez-Reed’s defense focused on blaming those responsible for the production. Jason Bowles, her attorney, denied that his client had carried the bullets to the set. He argued that it was not her responsibility, as a 24-year-old working on her second production, to enforce safety protocols for the entire crew. Testimony painted a chaotic shoot where several responsibilities fell on one person to allow the producers to stay within budget. Gutierrez-Reed also had to supervise tasks related to props.
Bowles blamed Baldwin for Hutchins’ death. The actor has publicly denied pulling the trigger of the weapon until filming the sequence in which the accident occurred. Gutierrez-Reed’s attorney indicated in his closing arguments that the armorer could not have foreseen that the star would fire the revolver. “It was not in the script for Mr. Baldwin to point the weapon. She didn’t know that Mr. Baldwin was going to do what he did,” he asserted. The courtroom was shown a video of another moment during the shooting when the 30 Rock star empties a gun. The final shot was fired after Souza yelled “cut!” Baldwin’s trial in the Rust case is scheduled for mid-July.
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