Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed has been denied a new trial after her lawyers failed to convince a judge that their client had been deprived of a fair hearing by the same evidence dispute that led to Alec Baldwin’s case being dismissed in July. New Mexico Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer upheld the manslaughter conviction against Gutierrez-Reed, rejecting the argument from her lawyers that prosecutors had withheld evidence that could have exonerated her.
In her written order, Marlowe Sommer stated that the attorneys did not demonstrate a reasonable possibility that the trial’s outcome would have been different had the evidence been available to Gutierrez-Reed. The judge also dismissed Gutierrez-Reed’s request to be released from custody, deeming it moot since the petition for a new trial was denied.
Judge Marlowe Sommer previously halted and terminated Baldwin’s trial due to police and prosecutors’ misconduct and their failure to disclose evidence in the 2021 shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set outside Santa Fe. Baldwin, the lead actor and co-producer for Rust, was handling a gun that discharged, resulting in Hutchins’ tragic death and injuring director Joel Souza.
Gutierrez-Reed was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in March by a jury overseen by Marlowe Sommer, who subsequently imposed the maximum 18-month sentence. While Gutierrez-Reed is appealing her conviction in a higher court, jurors acquitted her of charges related to tampering with evidence in the Rust investigation. Prosecutors attributed the live ammunition presence on set and the disregard for gun safety protocols to Gutierrez-Reed.
Unshared evidence cited by Gutierrez-Reed’s legal team included a firearms expert’s report on the gun Baldwin used, later turned-in ammunition, and an interview with Rust ammunition supplier Seth Kenney. Gutierrez-Reed pleaded not guilty to a separate felony charge of carrying a gun into a Santa Fe bar where firearms are prohibited, with a proposed plea agreement awaiting court review.
In a recent revelation, director Joel Souza expressed how the tragic incident during Rust’s filming had deeply affected him, stating, “When I tell someone it ruined me, I don’t mean in the sense that people might generally think. I don’t mean that it put my career in ruins. I mean, internally, the person I was just went away. That stopped.”
Additional reporting by Associated Press.