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On October 21, 2021, tragedy struck the set of the upcoming Western movie Rust when cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed by a live round discharged from a prop revolver that was held by actor Alec Baldwin, and director Joel Souza was injured by the same round. Cut to this past January, Baldwin was indicted (again) for involuntary manslaughter over Hutchins’ death, and his trial will begin in July. However, Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was also put in the legal spotlight, and now we’ve learned that she’s been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, for which she previously pleaded not guilty.
As reported by Variety, this verdict was reached after less than three hours of deliberation by a 12-member jury in the Santa Fe-based trial. Conversely, the jury did not convict Gutierrez-Reed on the separate evidence-tampering charge. She was remanded into custody after the verdict was read, and she now faces up to 18 months in prison, with her sentencing being set for sometime in April.
Per THR, following the shooting that killed Halyna Hutchins and injured Joel Souza, five live rounds were found amidst dummy rounds on the Rust set. While it’s unknown how those live rounds ended up on set, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed’s continually claimed that she’s loaded the revolver Alec Baldwin was holding with dummy rounds. Prosecutors argued at the trial that Gutierrez-Reed was “careless” with handling the firearms and ammunition, whereas the defense claimed that she was, as the outlet described, “the scapegoat for larger safety issues on set that she could not control.” Jason Bowles, her attorney, pointed the blame at Baldwin, who’s also one of Rust’s producers, as well as weapons supplier Seth Kenney.
In order for Gutierrez-Reed to be convicted for involuntary manslaughter, the jury had to agree she acted with “willful disregard for the safety of others,” and that Hutchins’ death was a “foreseeable” consequence of her actions. During her closing argument on Wednesday, prosecutor Kari Morrisey argued that Gutierrez-Reed was responsible for bringing those live rounds to the Rust set and hadn’t done her due diligence to test them to ensure they were dummy rounds, all of which boiled down to an “astonishing” failure to adhere to industry safety practices. Juror Alberto also said this outside of the courthouse:
She could have paused work, stopped, and cleared it all up, and just never did. That was her job to check those rounds — those firearms. No one wanted to pay attention or do that sort of stuff and stop work.
Following the Rust shooting, production was suspended until April 2023, though by that point filming had shifted from New Mexico to Montana. Cameras finished rolling on May of the same year. Rust takes place in 1880s Kansas and follows an older outlaw who comes out of hiding to save his 13-year-old grandson from being hanged for an accidental murder, and the two subsequently find themselves on the run from a U.S. Marshal and a bounty hunter. Alec Baldwin’s costars include Patrick Scott McDermott, Travis Fimmel, Frances Fisher and Jake Busey.
Rust still doesn’t have a release date yet, so it’s unclear if it will end up on the 2024 movies schedule or not. Stay tuned to CinemaBlend for more information about that upcoming release, as well as how Alec Baldwin’s trial ends up going this summer.