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Hannah Gutierrez-Reed watches closing arguments in her manslaughter trial on Wednesday, March 6, 2024, in Santa Fe, New Mexico (via Law&Crime). Inset: Alec Baldwin holds a gun on the set of the movie “Rust” (Santa Fe Sheriff’s Office).
The armorer for the Alec Baldwin movie ‘Rust’ has been convicted in the on-set death of the film’s cinematographer.
A jury found Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, 26, guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Halyna Hutchins, who died after Baldwin fired a live round from a prop gun while on the Sante Fe, New Mexico, movie set on Oct. 21, 2021.
She faced two counts of involuntary manslaughter, which carries a potential 18-month sentence, for allegedly bringing live ammunition onto the set of the movie and failing to properly review the ammunition in the gun before it was used. She was found not guilty of tampering with evidence for allegedly trying to give someone else a bag of cocaine after police interviewed her on the day of the shooting. On Thursday, jurors were instructed that they could find Gutierrez-Reed guilty of the lesser charge of negligent use of a firearm.
The verdict comes after a 10-day trial and 2 1/2 hours of jury deliberation.
In closing arguments Wednesday, prosecutor Kari Morrissey said that Gutierrez-Reed failed to live up to the responsibility of her job.
“She was negligent, she was careless, she was thoughtless,” Morrissey said.
“This was a game of Russian roulette every time an actor had a gun with dummies,” the prosecutor also said.
The defense painted Gutierrez-Reed as a “convenient fall person, a convenient scapegoat” for the more powerful people around her.
“The big guys want to sail off into the sunset, finish the movie, make their money,” defense attorney Jason Bowles said in closing arguments on Wednesday. “Because they have the convenient fall person right here.”
In rebuttal arguments, Morrissey denied that Gutierrez-Reed was a scapegoat, and said that Hutchins’ death as a result of Gutierrez’s actions was “100% foreseeable.”
Baldwin, a producer on the film, allegedly pulled the trigger and fired the bullet that killed Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza. He has pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter and faces a trial set to begin in July.
Assistant director David Halls previously pleaded no contest to negligent use of a deadly weapon. He received a six-month suspended jail sentence.
