‘Rust’ Armorer Denied New Trial In Wake of Alec Baldwin Case Dismissal
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the Rust movie armorer now serving an 18-month sentence for the shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, has lost her bid for a new trial and release from prison.
In related rulings issued Monday, Santa Fe Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer said Gutierrez-Reed failed to persuade the court that her involuntary manslaughter conviction last March might have been averted if she had known about certain evidence that only came to light through the subsequent, related trial of Alec Baldwin on the same charge. In Baldwin’s case, his trial ended in the dramatic dismissal of his single involuntary manslaughter charge in July after Marlowe Sommer ruled prosecutors “unilaterally withheld” information related to a batch of ammunition turned over by a so-called good Samaritan the day Gutierrez-Reed was found guilty.
More from Rolling Stone
The batch of ammunition proved so critical to Baldwin’s prosecution because the individual who turned it over, Troy Teske, said it belonged to Gutierrez-Reed’s dad, famed movie armorer Thell Reed. The batch notably included Starline Brass cartridges with nickel primers that matched the live bullet that killed Hutchins. Baldwin’s lawyers argued that the suppressed evidence was key to their defense theory that Gutierrez-Reed’s dad gave Starline Brass cartridges with nickel primers to props supplier Seth Kenney – and that Kenney, a respected armorer, allegedly let some of the live cartridges slip into the boxes of inert dummy rounds that he sold to the Rust production in a turn of events that Baldwin never could have predicted. (Kenney vehemently denies this claim and has never been charged in the case.)
With her rulings Monday, Marlowe Sommer said Gutierrez-Reed wasn’t in a similar position to Baldwin with respect to the Teske ammunition. She said Gutierrez-Reed’s lawyers knew about Teske heading into her trial and chose not to collect the ammunition or call him to the stand. The judge said it wasn’t until after Gutierrez-Reed’s conviction that Teske handed over the bullets at the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office, where they were booked under a different case number and not supplied to Baldwin’s defense. The judge also found that the late disclosure of an interview with Kenney and a suppressed supplemental report on the replica revolver that killed Hutchins did not provide enough grounds to grant Gutierrez-Reed a new trial either.
“Defendant has not established that this evidence undermines confidence in the verdict when considering the significance of this evidence in relation to the record as a whole,” Marlowe Sommer wrote in her Monday ruling.
In their verdict last March, the jurors who convicted Gutierrez-Reed found that she negligently loaded the live bullet into the old-fashioned Pietta revolver that Baldwin discharged during a rehearsal inside a wooden church on October 21, 2021. Baldwin, 66, has long maintained he did not pull the trigger.
Best of Rolling Stone
Sign up for RollingStone's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Solve the daily Crossword
