Photo: Eddie Moore-Pool/Getty Images
Even though Alec Baldwin’s Rust manslaughter case was dismissed on July 12 over an alleged “cover-up,” the criminal proceedings surrounding Halyna Hutchins’s death are far from over. Earlier this year, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the film’s armorer, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter on March 6. Prosecutors claimed that Gutierrez-Reed failed to ensure the rounds were inert when she provided the gun to Baldwin during a scene. While Gutierrez-Reed filed an appeal on May 14, 2024, following her sentencing in April, Baldwin’s “cover-up” allegation in papers and a hearing opened the door for her to fight conviction another way. Gutierrez-Reed’s attorneys filed paperwork on Tuesday, July 16, requesting dismissal or a new trial based on claims of withheld evidence — and her release while these proceedings unfold. However, on September 30, a New Mexico judge denied Gutierrez-Reed a new trial. Here’s a breakdown of how we got here.
What’s happened in Gutierrez-Reed’s case since Baldwin’s was dismissed?
The key to what’s next is the new shocking evidence from Baldwin’s team that Troy Teske, a former Arizona police officer who knew key figures in the case, gave live rounds to the Santa Fe sheriff’s office potentially relating to the Rust incident on March 6. Teske, a friend of Gutierrez-Reed’s father, legendary armorer Thell Reed, described the rounds as evidence when he dropped them off; police and prosecutors knowingly filed this in a way that kept it from Baldwin. Following a hearing on this issue, the case imploded, immediately raising questions about Gutierrez-Reed’s conviction — and whether it could get thrown out because of this — since firearms evidence also relates to the charge for which she was convicted.
In Gutierrez-Reed’s new paperwork, her lawyers Jason Bowles and Monnica Barreras point to special prosecutor Kari Morrissey and lead investigator Corporal Alexandria Hancock’s comments during the hearing. Hancock said that Morrissey was part of the decision to put the bullets in a separate case file. They claim that Morrissey — who made the shocking decision to call herself as a witness during this hearing — lied under oath when she said that she didn’t know it was a separate file number. Gutierrez-Reed’s lawyers, who noted that Morrissey had known about the Teske rounds for years, said they even followed up with her about them in January 2024 — before her trial — asking whether the prosecution was going to pick up the rounds for testing. Morrissey, who responded to their January 8 email the same day, told them that prosecutors would not test the rounds, saying she “found them visually dissimilar and not relevant.” Gutierrez-Reed’s team said that after Teske dropped off the rounds, they hoped that this possible evidence would be sent to the FBI for analysis so they could pursue an appeal. But instead, the state’s decision to put them in an unrelated case file was part of a concerted effort “to hide them.” In their request to case judge Mary Marlowe Sommer, they note that she threw out Baldwin’s case to ensure “the integrity” of justice. “How can it be any different with Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s case, with this proven litany of serious discovery abuses?” the lawyers asked. But in denying Gutierrez-Reed’s new trial, Marlowe Sommer ruled that the ammunition “does not qualify, as a matter of law, as material evidence because it was available to defendant in advance of and during trial,” per the New York Times.
Why was Gutierrez-Reed charged in the first place?
Prosecutors argued that on October 21, 2021, Gutierrez-Reed loaded the revolver at the center of this incident. They claim that she locked the gun in a prop-truck safe before a lunch break without following proper safety protocols. Following lunch, prosecutors said, Gutierrez-Reed didn’t check the gun before handing it to assistant director David Halls. They claim this was the “third time” she did “not properly, or to industry standards and safe practices, clear and show safe the weapon and rounds.”
Prosecutors said that Halls — who entered a no-contest plea to negligent use of a deadly weapon and received a six-month suspended sentence — described the weapon as “cold” before handing it to Baldwin. In the prosecutors’ view, Gutierrez-Reed was responsible for everything involving firearms on the Rust set, including safety and training, and that Hutchins’s death resulted from her negligence.
How does the new bullet evidence tie into all this?
Since the shot that killed Halyna Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza was fired, everyone has wondered how live ammo got onto the Rust set in the first place. Gutierrez-Reed’s defense had claimed that she was being “framed” and that evidence had been tampered with during the investigation. During Gutierrez-Reed’s trial, her attorney pointed out there wasn’t direct evidence indicating that she had brought live ammo onto the set.
In their motion to dismiss last week, Baldwin’s lawyers argued that the Santa Fe sheriff’s office and prosecutors “concealed” that the live round came from a man who provided firearms to set named Seth Kenney. (During the hearing, Kenney insisted that he was not responsible for live ammo winding up on set.) The defense claims that Kenney called Teske during a police interview on November 1, 2021. Following this interview, Teske sent police a picture of ammunition that didn’t match rounds discovered on the Rust set. The prosecutor later asked Teske to send ammunition from a batch that Kenney had used on another set to examine them. Teske agreed to hand it in, but the prosecution never collected the bullets. In court papers on July 11, Baldwin’s defense said the materials were “evidence that the live rounds came from Kenney” and “favorable to Baldwin,” so the state wanted to bury it. Judge Sommer agreed with the defense and dismissed the case with prejudice. This is why Gutierrez-Reed is turning to that evidence in pushing to dismiss her case.
Why would this help Gutierrez-Reed?
Gutierrez-Reed was tried by the same prosecutor who tried Baldwin, with a lot of the same evidence. This evidence could be even more important for Gutierrez-Reed’s case than Baldwin’s, says veteran trial attorney Troy Lovell. Lovell pointed out that Baldwin’s case involved his behavior — such as pointing the gun at Hutchins — but that he was never accused of bringing ammo into Rust’s set or loading the gun.
“With Gutierrez, it’s directly relevant,” says Lovell of potential evidence relating to the ammo’s origin. “It shows how she could have gotten it, and if somehow there are circumstances where it was snuck in or could have come from a different source.” If new evidence surfaces, even after a trial, the defense can take that to court. Lovell thinks this is “very good grounds” to set aside the guilty verdict.
Rachel Fiset, co-founder of Los Angeles–based Zweiback, Fiset & Zalduendo LLP, says that bail pending an appeal is more likely now in the wake of the evidence revelations. Gutierrez-Reed’s team had said in their push for dismissal that Morrissey and police investigators engaged in “extreme misconduct” with their handling of Teske’s evidence. “Even if the evidence was given after her trial, they will dive into the prosecutor’s conduct throughout her trial and throughout the discovery process even deeper now, because there will be this assumption that the prosecutor is not acting ethically in perhaps multiple ways,” Fiset says. (Fiset and Lovell spoke to Vulture before the new documents came out.) “I think they’re going to use all of these strategies for her advantage to both get her bail pending appeal and to get the case overturned.” The most likely — and best-case — scenario for Gutierrez’s fight against her conviction would be if a higher court sends her case back to a lower court for retrial based on the evidence. Less likely is an appeals court deciding that the evidence issue was so fraught that Gutierrez-Reed’s indictment should be tossed outright.
Related
Alec Baldwin’s Rust Manslaughter Trial Ends in DismissalRust Armorer Demands New Trial Following Alec Baldwin’s DismissalAlec Baldwin Thanks Supporters in First Statement After Rust Trial Dismissal
