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The special prosecutor for Alec Baldwin’s fatal 2021 shooting of Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins should be tossed out and the troubled indie Western’s incarcerated armorer should be either set free or given a new trial, a New Mexico judge heard today.
Why? “Lying, cheating, hiding evidence,” according to Hannah Gutierrez Reed’s lawyer Jason Bowles.
“I’m asking that this Court, in its inherent power, remove her from further prosecution of the Rust case, and we are asking for a dismissal on the same basis as this Court dismissed Mr. Baldwin’s case,” the defense attorney declared in a virtual hearing Thursday morning of special prosecutor Kari Morrissey.
After a mere four days, Baldwin’s trial was suddenly tossed out on July 12 in after dramatic revelations of ammunition evidence apparently being deliberately hidden from the actor’s defense team by prosecutors. “She has testified before this court, and I submit, and I don’t do it lightly, her testimony was false, and …she didn’t exercise reasonable diligence,” Bowles stated to Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer of the Baldwin case and Morrissey’s conduct.
“What Ms. Morrissey did in this case was she destroyed public trust across the board and the Rust prosecution on a case watched by the nation and the world,” Bowles said later in the hearing, calling the matter “one of the biggest debacles of ethical misconduct possibly in the history of New Mexico.”
To that, Bowles is also seeking to have Gutierrez Reed released immediately, as he argued again today in the just over one hour hearing. In those remarks, Bowles also noted that a retrial and appeal could end up taking longer that the year and a half sentence Gutierrez Reed was given in the spring after trial.
“The legal analysis has to be conducted and it has not been conducted here,” a serrated Morrissey countered of the effort to have her removed from all Rust matters. Among the shambles of the July dismissed involuntary manslaughter trial of Baldwin due to suppressed evidence, Morrissey went on in her own defense to say she believes she spoke the truth in her own testimony about why her fellow special prosecutor Erlinda Johnson quit the Rust star/producer’s case on the fourth day of trial.
Judge Sommer told the parties today that she would have a ruling on next week whether Gutierrez Reed could be out of the clink and keeping Morrissey on the Rust matters.
Hutchins was killed, and Rust director Joel Souza was injured, on October 21, 2021 after the Colt .45 Baldwin was pointing at the cinematographer fired off a live round during a rehearsal at the Bonanza Creek Ranch near Santa Fe where the indie Western was filming. Like Gutierrez Reed, Baldwin faced up to 18 months in state prison if found guilty, if his case wasn’t suddenly tossed out in mid-July with all the twists and turns of an upmarket TV thriller.
Then and now, Baldwin has always insisted that while he cocked the hammer, he did not pull the trigger and the gun somehow went off on its own. Then and now, the FBI, an independent analysis and the man who actually made the gun all disagreed with Baldwin’s assertion.
Behind bars in a Land of Enchantment after being sentenced to 18 months in a state prison for involuntary manslaughter on April 15, Gutierrez Reed was listening in on today’s proceedings. As well as fighting to keep Gutierrez Reed imprisoned and prevent a new trial, Morrissey is trying to get the Baldwin matter reinstated – with not much success so far.
Perhaps, most importantly, Morrissey today repeated her assertion that Bowles had full knowledge of the Colt .45 rounds that suddenly showed up earlier this year from ex-Arizona cop Troy Teske, a close friend of Gutierrez-Reed’s legendary Hollywood gun coach father. “The defense had more access to this ammunition that the state did prior to Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s trial,” Morrissey insisted, noting that Teske approached Bowles first and that the former police officer said so bluntly on video to the Santa Fe Sheriff’s department when he dropped the bullets off there this spring.
Bowles said several times today that he didn’t accept the Teske ammunition when offered because he “didn’t want to be in the chain of custody.” Notably, the lawyer pointed out that it is the “supplemental report” the state had on the Teske bullets that he is pinpointing as suppressed.
“Nothing was internationally buried,” a clearly annoyed Morrissey exclaimed today in her of evidence, interviews, reports and more that never made it into the docket of the Baldwin and Gutierrez Reed cases. “There was new discovery coming in constantly,” the special prosecutor went on to say, admitting that several elements of the case had been accidentally misplaced, and she tried to get it to the court and respective defense teams ASAP.
Emphasizing a perceived persistent “lack of disclosure” and “suppression” by the state from ammunition evidence and forensic reports, Bowles on Thursday also put the timeline of how live rounds showed up on the set of Rust under the legal microscope in his presentation to Judge Sommer this morning. Again and again, the Albuquerque-based lawyer used variations on the phrase “shade on the truth” to characterize Special Prosecutor Morrissey in both the Gutierrez Reed and the dismissed Baldwin cases.
With over a year to go on her sentence, the Rust armorer could see freedom next week if the Baldwin case proves convincing precedent to Judge Sommer – who has found the arguments and conduct of the special prosecutor distinctly lacking time and time again in this tragedy.
