Hannah Gutierrez Reed, the armorer convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the Alec Baldwin film "Rust," will remain in jail as her lawyers appeal the verdict. On Friday, a Santa Fe judge denied the defense's request for Gutierrez Reed's release and refused to order a new trial in the case.
During the hearing, which was held remotely via Google Meet, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer emphasized the gravity of the situation, stating, "Keep in mind there was a death that the jury determined was caused by her. So I am not releasing her." Gutierrez Reed, who appeared from the Santa Fe County Adult Detention Facility, is scheduled to be sentenced on April 15 and faces up to 18 months in prison.
The defense's request for a new trial was based on a recent New Mexico Supreme Court ruling in another case, State v. Taylor, which overturned a guilty verdict due to confusing jury instructions. Gutierrez Reed's lawyers argued that the instructions in her case were similarly confusing and that the Taylor case made it nearly certain that her conviction would be overturned.
However, prosecutors pushed back, arguing that the two cases were dissimilar. In the Taylor case, jurors were asked to convict based on four separate acts joined by an "and/or" clause, which the Supreme Court warned against using in jury instructions due to the potential for confusion. In contrast, the Gutierrez Reed case only had two acts separated by the "and/or" clause.
Judge Marlowe Sommer agreed with the prosecution, stating, "I am denying your motion. I do not think that Taylor requires a new trial in this case." She added that she would issue a written order on Monday.
During Gutierrez Reed's two-week trial, which began on February 21, prosecutors alleged that she inadvertently brought live bullets onto the set - a major breach of film safety protocols - and failed to properly check the rounds before loading one of them into Baldwin's gun. The prosecution focused on Gutierrez Reed's behavior as an armorer, claiming that she didn't do her job correctly.
"Hannah Gutierrez knew that Baldwin was loose. She knew it," prosecutor Kari Morrissey said during closing arguments. "She didn't do anything about it, even though it was her job. It was her job. It is her job to say to an A-list actor, if in fact, that's what you want to call him, 'Hey, you can't behave that way with those firearms.' That is her job. That is what they pay her for. That is the job that she applied for. That is the job that she accepted."
Gutierrez Reed's legal team, led by Jason Bowles, argued that the jury instructions "could confuse the jury and lead to a non-unanimous verdict." In a motion for a new trial, Bowles cited the New Mexico Supreme Court's ruling in the Taylor case, which criticized the use of "and/or" in listing various acts the jury could find committed by the defendants.
Special prosecutors Kari Morrissey and Jason Lewis countered that the jury instructions were "neither confusing nor legally insufficient," stating that while the use of "and/or" should be avoided in jury instructions, the test for determining whether instructions are legally insufficient is far more complex.
As Gutierrez Reed remains in jail pending her appeal, actor Alec Baldwin is scheduled to face his own involuntary manslaughter trial in July for pointing the gun at Hutchins and, allegedly, pulling the trigger. The tragic incident, which occurred in 2021 at Bonanza Creek Ranch while staging a scene in a small church, has sent shockwaves through the film industry and raised questions about safety protocols on movie sets.
