Prosecutors say she was “unprofessional and sloppy.” Her defense claims she’s a “scapegoat” who was “the least powerful person on that set.”
These dueling portrayals of Hannah Gutierrez-Reed took center stage Thursday during opening statements in the young armorer’s involuntary manslaughter trial in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Gutierrez-Reed, 26, has pleaded not guilty to charges she negligently loaded a live bullet into the .45-caliber Colt revolver that actor Alec Baldwin accidentally fired on the set of the Western movie Rust, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on October 21, 2021.
While Baldwin has pleaded not guilty to his own charge of involuntary manslaughter, Gutierrez-Reed is the one facing 12 jurors first in a trial expected to last two weeks. In opening statements, prosecutors said the evidence will show Gutierrez-Reed carelessly brought live ammunition onto Rust’s set, “treated safety protocols as if they were optional,” started the chain reaction that led to Hutchins’ death and later asked a fellow crew member to hide a bag of cocaine for her hours after the shooting. After prosecutors spoke first, lead defense lawyer Jason Bowles said his client wasn’t to blame. He said the power during the entire production, as well as culpability the day of the shooting, belonged to Baldwin.
“Mr. Baldwin, one of the lead producers [and] head actor in the movie, really controlled the set,” Bowles told the jury. “You’re going to hear that he violated some of the most basic gun safety rules you can ever learn. From a young age, we all learn you don’t point a gun at somebody, ever, unless you want to shoot them. You treat all guns as loaded, and you keep your finger out of the trigger until you’re ready to shoot. He violated all of those. It wasn’t Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, it was Mr. Baldwin.”
Giving his first full defense presentation, Bowles said Gutierrez-Reed was essentially set up to fail. He said the then-24-year-old armorer was “forced” to divide her time between managing guns and working as a props assistant to Sarah Zachry, the props master responsible for sourcing everything the actors touched. He said penny-pinching producers were irresponsibly “splitting” Gutierrez-Reed’s precious hours, creating a “chaotic scene” where she was “rolling cowboy cigarettes” instead of acting as armorer.
He said experts would testify that having only a “part-time armorer” on a Western like Rust is “completely inadvisable.” “It’s a terrible idea, but that’s what they did,” he said. The former federal prosecutor said jurors didn’t have to take his word for it. He said the production was investigated by New Mexico’s Occupational Health and Safety Bureau (OHSB) and ultimately fined a “record” amount for safety breakdowns. He said the OHSB probe confirmed that when Gutierrez-Reed asked for more time to attend to her armorer duties because she was worried about safety, a producer named Gabrielle Pickle shut her down.
“You’re going to hear that Ms. Gutierrez-Reed specifically requested to train Mr. Baldwin in a cross draw. And you’re also going to hear that he did not do that training. He did not set that training up,” Bowles continued, referring to the type of draw Baldwin was rehearsing shortly before his gun accidentally discharged.
Bowles said he didn’t believe jurors would be able to find his client guilty beyond a reasonable doubt because shortly after the shooting, Zachry moved items from the prop cart to the prop truck. He said this is important because prosecutors claim the live round that ended up in Baldwin’s gun was from a box of ammunition located on the prop cart by investigators.
Prosecutors showed jurors a photo of the box Thursday and said it had the same distinctive lettering as a box of ammunition owned by Gutierrez-Reed’s stepdad, Thell Reed, the famed Hollywood armorer known for his work on Western blockbusters including Tombstone, The Quick and the Dead, and 3:10 to Yuma. Bowles said instead of focusing on the box that was found, they should consider that Zachry spoke to a props supplier named Seth Kenney shortly after the shooting and admitted she also moved ammunition from the cart to the props truck before police arrived. (Neither Zachry nor Kenney have been charged in the case.)
“We’re never going to know exactly what was on that cart at time of shooting because it was tampered with,” Bowles said. He then faulted investigators for not testing the six live rounds eventually found on the set for Kenney’s fingerprints or DNA.
In terms of the live round that killed Hutchins, prosecutors faulted Gutierrez-Reed for not thoroughly checking each cartridge that she loaded into Baldwin’s revolver that day. They said she should have tested each one individually, to make sure it wasn’t a live bullet. They said it’s possible to distinguish live rounds from so-called dummy rounds because inert dummy rounds have either a hole in the side or something that “rattles” in place of explosive material. Bowles responded to that allegations by saying his client was working with a confusing mix of “cheap” ammunition with varying characteristics. He said one dummy round recovered from the set had no hole and no rattle.
“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. “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 also blasted Rust’s first assistant director, Dave Halls, for the safety protocols he instituted on set and how he handled two separate accidental weapons discharges that took place five days before Hutchins’ death. One involved Zachry, the other involved a stunt actor. “Dave Halls didn’t do anything about it. Again, that was his job. You’re going to hear he was the security coordinator for the entire set. David Halls didn’t delay (the production). He didn’t order additional training,” Bowles said, adding that some production officials weren’t even notified about the accidents. “That’s how much the production cared about safety. Because you know what the primary thing was here? It was rush, get this done so we can get the money.”
The defense lawyer further blamed Halls and producers for creating a protocol on the Rust set where Gutierrez-Reed would hand weapons to Halls before they were passed to actors. “This was a highly, highly unusual setup,” Bowles told jurors. “That was their fault. And what they’ve tried to do, you saw it in this courtroom today, they’re trying to blame it all on Hannah, a 24-year-old. Because why? Because she’s an easy target. She’s the least powerful person on that set.”
While Bowles said Gutierrez-Reed was “being made a scapegoat” for the “deliberate mistakes and erros” by Rust producers, prosecutors said the evidence will show Gutierrez-Reed allowed live ammunition to “spread” throughout the set. They said she was photographed with at least one live bullet in her lap on October 10, 2021, two days before the shipment of dummy rounds purchased for the production arrived from the props supplier.
“[Gutierrez-Reed] regularly failed to properly carry out her duties as an armorer,” prosecutor Jason Lewis told jurors. “Witnesses are going to describe the defendant’s conduct as unprofessional and sloppy. You will hear testimony that she routinely left guns and ammunition lying around the set, unattended, and that her gun safe and ammo cart were constantly disorganized.”
Lewis told jurors that Gutierrez-Reed treated safety protocols “as if they were optional,” rather than something necessary to protect “people’s lives.” “By failing to make those vital safety checks, the defendant acted negligently and without due caution. The decision she made that day contributed to Ms. Hutchins’ death.”
In testimony late Thursday, a crime lab technician with the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office told jurors that investigators didn’t test for any DNA on the live rounds because the FBI doesn’t do that type of testing. The technician, Marissa Poppell, said DNA testing on brass casings isn’t “standard” in forensics work because “there’s just a very small likelihood of getting enogh cells to have enough for a profile to be developed.”
As the cases against Gutierrez-Reed and Baldwin remain ongoing, Halls entered a no-contest plea to a misdemeanor charge of negligent use of a deadly weapon last March. As previously reported by Rolling Stone, Halls admitted to investigators that he failed to check all chambers of the revolver before taking it from Gutierrez-Reed, declaring it a “cold gun” — meaning it had no live rounds — and handing it to Baldwin. Under his plea deal, Halls was due to serve six months of unsupervised probation.
Gutierrez-Reed, who faces up to three years in prison if convicted, sat quietly at her defense table Thursday, wearing a gray blazer and white top. As she watched police video from the immediate aftermath of the shooting, she kept her composure but appeared pained at times, sighing and averting her gaze. The trial is being streamed live by Court TV.
