A movie weapons supervisor is facing up to 18 months in prison for the fatal shooting of a cinematographer by Alec Baldwin on the set of the Western film “Rust,” with her sentencing scheduled for Monday in a New Mexico state court.
Movie armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was convicted in March by a jury on a charge of involuntary manslaughter in the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and has been held for more than a month at a county jail on the outskirts of Santa Fe.
Baldwin, the lead actor and co-producer for “Rust,” was pointing a gun at Hutchins when the revolver went off, killing Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza.
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Prosecutors blamed Gutierrez-Reed for unwittingly bringing live ammunition onto the set of “Rust” where it was expressly prohibited and for failing to follow basic gun safety protocols. After a two-week trial, the jury deliberated for about three hours in reaching its verdict.
How on earth do you achieve this feat:
“unwittingly bringing live ammunition onto the set”
Weren’t they firing rounds off for fun during breaks? Or was that claim never substantiated
Not that it makes it better but it would explain how it happened
That was never alledged during the trial itself. There was live round practice, but it was done properly at a fireing range.
The prosecution’s theory was that they came from a different set which did use live rounds. Reed brought dummies herself (instead of going through the prop house for everything) due to shortages.
The defenses theory was that their prop house messed up and provided live rounds with their dummies.
The Variety article on the closing arguments is fairly succinct.
Throw in the fact that she apparently didn’t even give the rounds a little shake to confirm that they were empty except for the little BB rattling around in there, and “without due caution and circumspection” is a slam dunk. Baldwin’s case is a little more iffy, but certainly a reasonable one to bring to a jury.
Was Baldwin wrong on anything? Was he not just given the gun or were there other things at play?
Based on testimony and evidence presented at the Reed trial:
Even if the gun was loaded with blanks, this even would likely still have caused an injury (and possibly death, although likely not).
Baldwin will likely argue that Reed was supposed to know all of this and stopped him before the accident happened.