The armorer who killed Alec Baldwin's cinematographer on the set of the movie “The Last” when he loaded it with live ammunition when the gun he was rehearsing went off was found guilty Wednesday of manslaughter. .
The conviction of armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed marks the first time the jury has spoken in the trial for the shooting death of cinematographer Halina Hutchins.
After the verdict was read, prosecutors asked that Gutierrez-Reed be taken into custody, and Judge Mary L. Marlow Sommer agreed. Court officials led Gutierrez-Reed out of the courtroom without handcuffing him.
She could be sentenced to up to 18 months in prison.
Baldwin has also been charged with manslaughter and is scheduled to go on trial in July. He claimed he was not responsible because he had been told there was no live ammunition in the gun and there was no way there was any live ammunition at the scene of the shooting.
Gutierrez-Reed's trial, which lasted two weeks in the First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe, New Mexico, focused on the fact that Gutierrez-Reed was supposed to load Baldwin's revolver with dummy, or inert, rounds. I guessed. It looks like a real bullet on camera, but you can't fire it.
But one round turned out to be live. On October 21, 2021, Baldwin was working with Hutchins to set up camera angles in a wooden church when her gun went off, killing her and injuring the director. , I left the film industry wondering what had become of me. It's also possible that it happened on a set where the use of live ammunition is prohibited.
Prosecutors argued that Gutierrez-Reid exhibited a pattern of negligence on the set of “The Last,” including calling staff members to the stand to criticize her actions. They testified that she left the prop cart in which she stored her weapons and ammunition in disarray, and that she sometimes neglected to take her weapons from actors immediately after filming a scene.
The 12 jurors deliberated for two and a half hours before reaching their verdict. Outside the courtroom, one of the jurors, Alberto Sanchez, said the jury easily reached the verdict, finding that Gutierrez-Reed did not properly conduct safety checks on the gun.
“It was her job to inspect bullets and firearms,” he said.
The trial was enlivened by photographs of ammunition in plastic bags, hundreds of bullets, detailed demonstrations of how to operate the gun at the center of the shootout, and a Pietta replica of an 1873 revolver. .
Prosecutors accused Gutierrez-Reid of bringing live ammunition to the set and showing jurors a photo of the live ammunition early in filming, before a crucial shipment from the film's main ammunition supplier.
Gutierrez-Reed denies being the source of the live ammunition, and her lawyers argue that producers seeking to minimize costs undermined their authority, dispatched a crew at short notice, and shot Gutierrez-Reed. In his defense, he said he was a young armorer who had placed a huge burden on Mr. Reed. Additional prop duty.
After the shooting, police found six live rounds, including one fired on the set.
“This was like playing Russian roulette every time the actor had a dummy gun,” lead prosecutor Kari T. Morrissey said in closing arguments Wednesday.
A jury found Gutierrez-Reed on charges of tampering with evidence related to testimony from another Lust crew member that after the shooting, Gutierrez-Reed gave her a bag of cocaine and asked the crew if he could do it. He was found not guilty. Please hold it for her. The defense had argued that her account of the bag's contents was unreliable because the crew quickly threw it away.
In order to convict Gutierrez-Reed of manslaughter, the jury must have known that Gutierrez-Reed was aware of the dangers involved in his actions that day, and that he showed “intentional disregard for the safety of others.” It was necessary to unanimously agree that the action had been taken.
Prosecutors tried to convince jurors that Gutierrez-Reed's actions showed a pattern of negligence.
They showed jurors behind-the-scenes footage from filming, showing stuntmen holding rifles in ways the prosecution's expert witnesses deemed dangerous, including pointing a gun at the backs of young actors and director Joel Souza. It showed what it looked like. Gutierrez-Reed is doing everything he can to intervene. (Mr. Souza was later injured by the bullet that passed through Mr. Hutchins.)
“MS. Mr. Gutierrez was unwilling to maintain proper firearm safety,” Ms. Morrissey said in court.
Gutierrez-Reed chose not to take the stand, so jurors heard her side of the story through her attorney and through a video interview with sheriff's office investigators. Gutierrez-Reed told her investigators that on the day of the shooting, she loaded six rounds into the old-fashioned revolver Baldwin was using and checked all the rounds for signs of inertness. she said. But, she admitted, “I should have looked into it more.”
Gutierrez-Reed told investigators that he showed the gun to Dave Halls, the film's first assistant director, and rotated the cylinder so that the bullets inside were visible.
Halls, who avoided prison in the case through a plea deal, said he and Gutierrez-Reed routinely conducted thorough safety checks on guns used on set, but that day they fell short. I testified. He recalled that of the six rounds loaded in the gun, only three or four were clearly inert.
“I don't remember her turning the cylinder all the way,” Hall testified, later admitting, “I passed that safety inspection.”
The defense argued that Gutierrez-Reid could not be held criminally liable because he did not know there was live ammunition on set that day and could not have foreseen that Baldwin would point the gun at the crew. . They also repeatedly questioned the investigation by the sheriff's office, asking why it took more than a month to raid the office of Seth Kenney, the film's main supplier of weapons and ammunition. Mr. Kenney testified that the live ammunition did not come from him.
The defense's key witness was an inspector with the state Occupational Safety and Health Administration who testified that the production of “Lust” did not give Gutierrez-Reid enough time to “perform his duties to the best of his ability.”
Outside court after the sentencing, Gutierrez-Reed's lead attorney, Jason Bowles, said the defense plans to appeal. “We are disappointed in a lot of what happened in that courtroom,” he said, declining to elaborate.
In her closing argument, Bowles argued that Gutierrez-Reid was a “convenient fall” for a mistake on the part of the producers, underscoring her low status in the chain of command. But Ms Morrissey told jurors she was the boss when it came to her guns and urged them not to pay too much attention to the armorer's age.
“She is an independent decision maker when it comes to gun safety,” she said.
