Hannah Gutierrez Reed, the armourer of the film Rust who was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter last month for the 2021 on-set fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, was sentenced by a New Mexico judge to 18 months in prison overnight, the maximum possible punishment.
“I did not hear you take accountability in your allocution. You said you were sorry, but not [that] you were sorry for what you did,” Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer said in announcing the sentence.
“You alone turned a safe weapon into a lethal weapon,” the judge said. “But for you, Ms. Hutchins would be alive, a husband would have his partner, and a little boy would have his mother.”
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Gutierrez Reed, 26, had no visible reaction to the sentence. She was taken from the courtroom after the sentence was announced.
The verdict comes more than two years after Hutchins, 42, was killed by a live round of ammunition fired from a prop gun held by actor Alec Baldwin on October 21, 2021. The film’s director was also injured in the shooting.
As the armourer, Gutierrez Reed was responsible for firearm safety and storage on set. She became the first person to stand trial and be convicted in the case, which has captured international attention for more than two years.
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At trial, prosecutors argued she repeatedly violated safety protocol and acted without caution in performing her duties, leading to Hutchins’ death. Her defense attorney argued the 26-year-old has been scapegoated for the safety failures of film set management and other crew members. Gutierrez Reed did not testify at trial.
After hearing from more than 30 witnesses and deliberating for nearly three hours, jurors found Gutierrez Reed guilty of involuntary manslaughter in March. She was acquitted of a separate charge of evidence tampering.
Prosecutors had asked she be sentenced to the maximum prison time, citing a “complete and total failure to accept responsibility for her actions.” In contrast, the defense had asked she be released on probation, arguing she has no prior criminal history and has a “record of prior good works and positive things.”
She has been in custody since her conviction. Her defense attorney Jason Bowles told CNN they plan to appeal.
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Baldwin, the actor and celebrity, has also been charged with involuntary manslaughter and is expected to stand trial in July. He has pleaded not guilty and has maintained he did not pull the firearm’s trigger.
A judge is currently considering a motion filed by Baldwin’s legal team to dismiss his indictment, citing alleged impropriety by the government – a motion prosecutors vehemently slammed in a rebuttal filing of their own.
Former armourer says ‘my heart aches’
Prior to the sentence, Hutchins’ family in Ukraine and friends spoke on Monday (overnight in Australia) about what Hutchins meant to them.
“The day of her death ruined my entire life,” her mother, Olga Solovey, said in a video with translated subtitles. “It’s heart-wrenching to see her child grow without his mother.”
Joel Souza, the Rust director and screenwriter who was also shot in the incident, acknowledged the physical and emotional pain he has felt in the two-and-a-half years since the shooting.
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“One day the world made sense, and the next day it didn’t, and it still doesn’t, and I’m not sure it ever will again,” he said.
He described Hutchins as a great talent. “She was a touchstone for all who knew her, and those of us who were lucky enough to have shared in her fleeting time on this planet are better for it,” he said.
Gutierrez Reed, wearing a beige jail uniform, spoke in court and offered her condolences to those affected by Hutchins’ death.
“First and foremost, my heart aches for Hutchins’ family and friends and colleagues as well and it has since the day this tragedy occurred,” she said.
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“Halyna has been and always will be an inspiration to me. I understand she was taken too soon and I pray that you all find peace,” she continued.
She asked the judge to sentence her to probation.
“Your honour, when I took on Rust I was young and I was naïve, but I took my job as seriously as I knew how to. Despite not having proper time, resources and staffing, when things got tough I just did my best to handle it.”
“The jury has found me in part at fault for this godawful tragedy, but that doesn’t make me a monster, that makes me human,” she said.
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In a sentencing memo dated April 10, Gutierrez Reed’s defense team requested she be released on probation with conditions set by the judge and undergo counselling and rehabilitative efforts. She feels “incredibly saddened and heart broken by what happened on that tragic day on the Rust set,” the memo said.
In an April 12 court filing responding to the defense memo, Morrissey and special prosecutor Jason Lewis requested Gutierrez Reed be sentenced to 18 months in prison, arguing she “continues to deny responsibility and blame others.” Prosecutors also cited jail calls in which Gutierrez Reed allegedly complained “about the negative affects this incident has had on her life” and called jurors derogatory names.
A native of Ukraine, Hutchins obtained a graduate degree in international journalism from Kyiv National University and worked as an investigative journalist with British documentary productions in Europe. She later moved to Los Angeles and discovered a love of cinematography.
She was credited with involvement in the production of 49 film, TV and video titles during her career, according to IMDB. She worked on movies including Archenemy, starring Joe Manganiello, which was released in 2020, and was named a rising star by American Cinematographer magazine in 2019.
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What happened in the trial
The fatal shooting took place during a break in the filming of the Western movie Rust at the Bonanza Creek Ranch outside of Santa Fe.
Baldwin had been practicing for a scene and was drawing and pointing a revolver with guidance from Hutchins and Joel Souza, the film’s director, according to a 2023 probable cause statement.
Baldwin drew the revolver, pointed it at Hutchins and fired the weapon shortly before 2pm, striking her in the chest and injuring Souza, prosecutors said in the probable cause statement. Hutchins was pronounced dead just after 3.30pm.
In the trial, prosecutors alleged Gutierrez Reed repeatedly violated safety protocols and neglected her responsibilities leading up to the shooting. She failed to perform safety checks on the prop weapon and the ammunition she loaded it with, handed it to a staff member who should not have been handling weapons on set and then departed the area when Baldwin ultimately fired the fatal round, prosecutors said.
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“This is not a case where Hannah Gutierrez made one mistake and that one mistake was accidentally putting a live round into that gun,” Morrissey said during closing arguments. “This case is about constant, never-ending safety failures that resulted in the death of a human being and nearly killed another.”
Morrissey said Gutierrez Reed’s repeated failures allowed six live rounds to make their way onto the set and said she did not conduct safety checks that would have caught them.
“She had six, six live rounds on that movie set, the earliest date that I can track them for you is October 10, [2021],” the prosecutor said. “Six, and she failed to ferret them out for 12 days. What that means is that she wasn’t shaking any dummy rounds, she wasn’t testing anything.”
‘Dummy’ rounds refer to ammunition that contains no explosive elements but looks as if it was a real bullet when fired.
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“If she’s not checking the dummy ammunition during the pendency of the filming to make sure that those rounds that are designed to look like live rounds are in fact dummy rounds, this was a game of Russian roulette every time an actor had a gun with dummies,” Morrissey added.
Bowles, the defense attorney, placed the blame elsewhere. He questioned how the live ammunition made it on set and alleged the production team created a chaotic and unsafe environment that put Gutierrez Reed under “really tough conditions to keep up with.” He also said Baldwin did not follow common-sense gun safety rules on set when he handled the firearm and acted unpredictably when he pointed the weapon at Hutchins.
“[Gutierrez Reed] could not anticipate what Baldwin would do. It was not in the script, it was not foreseeable,” he said in closing arguments. “Management was responsible for safety failures and not Hannah.”
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During the armourer’s trial, assistant film director David Halls admitted he was “negligent” in checking the gun and did not properly look through all the rounds in the gun’s chamber when Gutierrez Reed presented it to him.
“She opened up the latch to the revolver, I recall seeing three to four, what I believed to be dummy rounds,” Halls testified. He later added: “I don’t recall her fully rotating the cylinder.”
Halls would go on to yell “cold gun” before the weapon was handed to Baldwin, a remark meant to indicate the firearm did not have live rounds, according to a court document. Halls took a plea deal in 2023 for his role in the shooting, pleading no contest to one count of negligent use of a deadly weapon.
He was sentenced to six months of unsupervised probation, a $US500 (approx. $776) fine, had to participate in a firearms safety class, complete 24 hours of community service and not use drugs or alcohol.
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