A jury convicted a movie weapons supervisor of involuntary manslaughter on Wednesday in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer by actor Alec Baldwin during a rehearsal on the set of the Western movie Rust.
The verdict against movie armourer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed assigns new blame in the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in October 2021 after an assistant director last year pleaded no contest to negligent handling of a firearm. The proceedings are a preamble to a scheduled trial of Baldwin in July on a single charge of involuntary manslaughter.
Baldwin, the lead actor and a co-producer on Rust, was indicted by a grand jury in January on a charge of involuntary manslaughter. He pleaded not guilty ahead of the proceedings, which are scheduled to begin in July.
He was pointing a gun at Hutchins on the movie set outside Santa Fe, N.M., when the gun went off, killing her and wounding director Joel Souza.
Prosecutors at a two week trial alleged Gutierrez-Reed unwittingly brought live ammunition onto the set of Rust while flouting basic industry gun-safety guidelines.
Gutierrez-Reed, who was 24 years old and on her second feature film as armourer at the time of the 2021 shooting, pleaded not guilty at the trial held in downtown Santa Fe.
Immediately after the verdict was read out in court, the judge ordered the now-26-year-old placed into the custody of deputies. Lead attorney Jason Bowles said afterward that Gutierrez-Reed will appeal the conviction, which carries a penalty of up to 18 months in prison and a $5,000 US fine.
Santa Fe-based state district court Judge Mary Marlowe Somer did not immediately set a sentencing date.
Messages seeking comment about Wednesday’s verdict from Baldwin’s spokesperson and a lawyer were not immediately returned.
Actor Alec Baldwin and weapons specialist Hannah Gutierrez-Reed will be charged later this month with involuntary manslaughter in relation to the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins who was killed on a New Mexico movie set in October 2021.
‘A game of Russian roulette’
In closing arguments, prosecutor Kari Morrissey described “constant, never-ending safety failures” on the set of Rust and Gutierrez-Reed’s “astonishing lack of diligence” with gun safety.
“We end exactly where we began — in the pursuit of justice for Halyna Hutchins,” Morrissey told the jury.
“Hannah Gutierrez failed to maintain firearms safety, making a fatal accident willful and foreseeable.”
Prosecutors contend the armourer repeatedly skipped or skimped on standard gun-safety protocols that might have detected the live rounds.
“This was a game of Russian roulette every time an actor had a gun with dummies,” Morrissey said.
Defence attorneys said the problems on the set extended far beyond Gutierrez-Reed’s control, including the mishandling of weapons by Baldwin.
At trial they cited sanctions and findings by state workplace safety investigators.
Baldwin went ‘off-script’
Prosecutors did not come close to proving where the live rounds originated and failed to fully investigate an Albuquerque-based ammunition supplier, the defence said at trial.
Lead attorney Jason Bowles told jurors that no one in the cast and crew thought there were live rounds on set and Gutierrez-Reed could not have foreseen that Baldwin would “go off-script” when he pointed the revolver at Hutchins.
Investigators found no video recordings of the shooting.
“It was not in the script for Mr. Baldwin to point the weapon,” Bowles said. “She didn’t know that Mr. Baldwin was going to do what he did.”
To drive the point home, Bowles played a video outtake in which Baldwin fired a revolver loaded with blanks — including a shot after a director calls “cut.”
The sheriff’s office of Santa Fe County, N.M., has released officer body camera footage of the aftermath of the deadly shooting on the set of the film Rust. Video of actor Alec Baldwin rehearsing with his gun has also been released.
Gutierrez-Reed ‘a scapegoat’
On the day of the shooting, Bowles said, Gutierrez-Reed alone was segregated in a police car away from others, becoming a convenient scapegoat.
“You had a production company on a shoestring budget, an A-list actor that was really running the show,” Bowles said. “At the end, they had somebody they could all blame.”
Dozens of witnesses testified during the 10-day trial, from FBI experts in firearms and crime-scene forensics to a camera dolly operator who described the fatal gunshot and watching Hutchins go flush and lose feeling in her legs before death.
The prosecution painstakingly assembled photographic evidence it said traced the arrival and spread of live rounds on set, and argued that Gutierrez-Reed repeatedly missed opportunities to ensure safety and treated basic gun protocols as optional.
The defence had cast doubt on the relevance of photographs of ammunition, noting FBI testimony that live rounds can’t be fully distinguished from dummy ones on sight.
Bowles began his closing arguments by highlighting testimony from Rust armourer Sarah Zachry saying that, in a panic in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, she threw out ammunition from guns used by actors other than Baldwin.
That undermined all evidence about the sources of ammunition, the defence argued.
Prosecutors said six live rounds found on set bear mostly identical characteristics and don’t match live rounds seized from the movie’s supplier in Albuquerque.
Defence attorneys said the cluttered supply office was not searched until a month after the shooting, undermining the significance of physical evidence.
In an interview with ABC News, actor Alec Baldwin says he didn’t pull the trigger on the prop gun he was holding when it fired and killed a cinematographer on the film set of Rust in October.
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