‘Rust’ Armorer Wants Conviction Tossed After Alec Baldwin’s Dismissal

Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the Rust armorer convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, is asking the New Mexico judge who dismissed a related involuntary manslaughter indictment against Alec Baldwin to let her off the hook as well.

In a new motion filed Tuesday, Gutierrez-Reed’s defense lawyer Jason Bowles argued that “severe and ongoing discovery violations by the state” give Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer adequate grounds to overturn his client’s March 6 conviction, vacate her 18-month prison sentence, and dismiss her case forever. He said such violations include the state’s suppression of the ammunition evidence that came to light on Friday during the stunning hearing that led to the immediate termination of Baldwin’s trial and permanent dismissal of his criminal case.

“This Court stated on July 12 that the integrity of the judicial system demanded that the court dismiss Mr. Baldwin’s case with prejudice. How can it be any different with Ms. Gutierrez Reed’s case, with this proven litany of serious discovery abuses?” Bowles wrote in his new 35-page motion obtained by Rolling Stone. “Justice demands that Hannah Gutierrez Reed’s conviction be overturned immediately, ensuring that the legal system does not perpetuate this core affront to our system, that has been watched all over the world.”

He alleged prosecutors “buried evidence” on multiple occasions, including when they failed to turn over a supplemental report written by a gun expert last August. He called the state’s conduct “exactly the evil” necessary to warrant a dismissal.

In his filing, Bowles alleged that special prosecutor Kari Morrissey “lied to this court several times” on Friday after she called herself to the witness stand and testified about the batch of live ammunition that was surrendered to the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office on March 6, the same day Gutierrez-Reed was convicted. Bowles noted that the man who surrendered the bullets, Troy Teske, was known to him before Gutierrez-Reed’s trial started because he was a friend of his client’s father, Thell Reed. But he said much about Teske’s interaction with law enforcement was revealed to him for the first time during Baldwin’s blockbuster hearing.

Before Morrissey took the stand on Friday, Judge Marlowe Sommer heard testimony and evidence that Teske surrendered the live bullets on March 6 with the explanation that he had been storing the ammunition for Reed and was concerned the bullets might match the live rounds found on the Rust set. While Morrissey testified that such a link would have only further implicated Gutierrez-Reed, Baldwin’s lawyers argued that it could have cut another way. They said jurors could have concluded that a match corroborated Reed’s claim that he gave a can of live ammunition to props supplier Seth Kenney as a “write off” after the men conducted a “cowboy training” with actors on a different movie prior to the start of Rust’s filming at the Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe. Kenney would go on to supply blank and inert dummy rounds to the Rust production, and according to previously reported conversations with investigators, Reed alleged it could have been Kenney who allowed live rounds from the cowboy training to make their way on set and into Baldwin’s gun. In a shocking moment last week, Judge Marlowe Sommer personally inspected three Starline brass bullets with silver primers that were surrendered by Teske on March 6. The bullet that killed Hutchins was a Starline brass cartridge with a silver primer. (Kenney has vehemently denied any wrongdoing, saying he personally checked each round to make sure it wasn’t live before he boxed up the ammunition sent to Rust. He was never charged with anything related to the deadly tragedy.)

In her ruling tossing Baldwin’s case, Judge Marlowe Sommer said that the sheriff’s office and prosecutors committed egregious errors when they booked the Teske bullets under a different case number and never mentioned them to Baldwin’s defense. “There is no way for the court to right this wrong,” said Marlowe Sommer as Baldwin broke down weeping in the Santa Fe courtroom. “Your motion to dismiss with prejudice is granted.”

According to Bowles’ new motion, Morrissey “lied to this court several times” during her testimony. He said while Morrissey testified that she didn’t know the bullets were booked under a different file number, the lead investigator on the case, Corporal Alexandria Hancock, testified that Morrissey was in on the decision. Bowles also pointed out that while Morrissey said under oath that her co-prosecutor Erlinda Johnson resigned on Friday because she didn’t want a public hearing on the alleged evidence violations, Johnson later said in media interviews that she told the court she was stepping down because she believed the case should be dismissed.

In an email sent Tuesday, Morrissey declined to comment on the new motion. “Our only statement will be our written response,” she wrote.

Addressing jurors at Gutierrez-Reed’s trial, prosecutors said the rookie armorer failed to check each cartridge and negligently loaded a live bullet into Baldwin’s replica Colt revolver before he pointed it at Hutchins during a rehearsal inside a makeshift wooden church. For his part, Baldwin maintains he did not pull the trigger before the gun accidentally fired the live bullet that ripped through Hutchins’ upper torso, perforating her lung and spinal column. The same bullet then wounded director Joel Souza and was recovered from his shoulder.

Bowles told the jurors that Gutierrez-Reed was a scapegoat and the “least powerful person on that set.” He said his client was asked to split her time between two competing jobs — armorer and props assistant — and that due to budget restrictions and mismanagement, she ended up working with a confusing mix of “cheap” ammunition with varying characteristics. He said one dummy round recovered from the set had no hole or rattle to signify it was inert.

“Ms. Gutierrez Reed was faced with a situation on this set of dealing with a mishmash of dummies, cheap dummies – [an expert] will call it garbage — that were just thrown together,” Bowles said in his opening statement. “She’s being rushed. She had to perform two jobs. She’s asking for more resources and help from her manager, and she’s not getting it.”

Bowles previously asked for a mistrial with the argument prosecutors withheld “bombshell exculpatory evidence” in the form of a supplemental report written about Baldwin’s replica revolver last August. In the report, a state-hired expert said he couldn’t explain how internal components of the gun ended up with microscopic diagonal toolmarks on their surface. The expert, Lucien Haag, later testified at a pre-trial hearing in Baldwin’s case that after he wrote the report, he reconsidered and concluded that the marks must have come from testing by the FBI that damaged the gun. Either way, Haag testified that the marks would not have affected the functionality of the firearm.

“Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s trial strategy was built on the assumption that there was no evidence suggesting the gun may have been modified or damaged at the time the incident occurred. Had the state disclosed the third Haag report, Ms. Gutierrez-Reed could have used its content to sow reasonable doubt as to causation generally and foreseeability. Ms. Gutierrez-Reed never got the opportunity,” Bowles argued in his motion filed Tuesday.