A judge has denied a request from Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed to appeal her involuntary manslaughter conviction.
After the shock dismissal of the case against actor Alec Baldwin in July, Gutierrez-Reed’s lawyer challenged the conviction against her, arguing prosecutors withheld potentially critical evidence. But on Monday, the New Mexico judge, Mary Marlowe Sommer, denied the motions requesting a new trial or a dismissal of the charges, as well as her release from prison.
Gutierrez-Reed’s defense argued that the state had suppressed a report from a firearms expert, failed to disclose an interview with a witness and didn’t provide a report and video interview with a man who came forward earlier this year with ammunition he said was related to the case.
Sommer ruled that the state did not suppress evidence that would have changed the result of the original trial. Gutierrez-Reed did not “establish that there is a reasonable probability that, had the evidence been available to defendant, the evidence would have produced a different verdict”, Sommer wrote.
Gutierrez-Reed was found guilty earlier this year for her role in the on-set shooting that led to the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in October 2021. The Rust crew was rehearsing at a movie set outside Santa Fe when a gun Baldwin was holding fired a round of live ammunition, fatally striking Hutchins and hitting the film’s director, Joel Souza.
Prosecutors blamed Gutierrez-Reed for unknowingly bringing live ammunition on to the Rust set and said she showed an “astonishing lack of diligence” with gun safety. Gutierrez-Reed was convicted in a March trial, and has been serving the maximum 18-month penalty in a New Mexico prison.
The latest development in the Rust saga comes three months after Sommer dismissed Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter charge. Legal observers had described the case against Baldwin, who was also a producer of the film, as a “botched prosecution”.
Sommer, who also oversaw Baldwin’s trial, had found in that case that prosecutors withheld evidence that could have been favorable to the actor in a manner that was “intentional and deliberate”. The prosecutor in Baldwin’s case has asked the judge to reinstate the charge against him.
