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Lawyers for “Rust” gunsmith Hannah Gutierrez Reed — convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the 2021 fatal on-set shooting of a cinematographer — have filed a motion for a new trial or to have her case dismissed after the related case against actor Alec Baldwin was dramatically dismissed last week.
The attorneys filed the motion Tuesday in First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe, citing “serious prosecutorial misconduct” and multiple allegations of “serious and ongoing violations of state disclosure rules.”
Gutierrez Reed’s attorneys are asking the court to order her release and to remove Kari Morrissey as special prosecutor in the case “for the misconduct that has been found and the violations committed in the case of Ms. Gutierrez Reed.”
On Friday, the involuntary manslaughter case against Baldwin — who authorities say had the fake gun that fired the shot that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in October 2021 — was dismissed after the judge overseeing the case ruled that prosecutors had failed to properly turn over evidence to the defense. Legal experts had said the failure of the actress’s case could lead to Gutierrez Reed’s release from New Mexico State Prison, where she is serving an 18-month sentence following her conviction in March.
In the filing Tuesday, Gutierrez Reed’s attorneys argue that his case should be dismissed or retried in part because of the judge’s ruling on the evidence withheld in the Baldwin case; what they say is Morrissey lying to the court about the evidence Friday; and what they say are other instances of suppressed evidence in the gunmaker case.
CNN has reached out to Morrissey for comment.
The shooting and the defense attorneys’ allegations
The shooting occurred on October 21, 2021. Baldwin was on the set of a ranch outside Santa Fe and practicing firing a toy gun — drawing it from a holster on the opposite side of his body from his drawing hand — when he fired a live round, killing Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza.
As a gunsmith, Gutierrez Reed was responsible for the safety and storage of firearms. At her trial, prosecutors alleged that she repeatedly violated safety protocol and acted carelessly in the performance of her duties, ultimately leading to Hutchins’ death. Gutierrez Reed’s defense attorney claimed that she was made a scapegoat for the safety lapses of set management and other crew members.
The evidence that derailed Baldwin’s trial came to light last week, when a crime scene technician testified that a man delivered a box of ammunition to the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office in March, just after Gutierrez Reed was convicted. The man, Troy Teske, a retired police officer and friend of the gunsmith’s father, told investigators he got the ammunition from accessory supplier Seth Kenney and that he believed the ammunition might be related to the “Rust” incident, the technician testified.
However, the technician testified that the items had been cataloged separately from Baldwin’s case and had not been included in the inventory of the “Rust” case or tested to see if they matched the fatal bullet.
Baldwin’s lawyers, in a filing last week asking to have the case dismissed, argued that it could indicate “an outside source of live ammunition (prop supplier Seth Kenney)” on set. Baldwin’s team’s filing alleges that prosecutors withheld the evidence because it “would be favorable to Baldwin,” the filing shows last week.
Baldwin was unaware of the risk that live ammunition had been brought onto the “Rust” set, and for prosecutors to link Baldwin to the source of the live ammunition, they would have to prove that Gutierrez Reed, the gunsmith, brought the ammunition to the set, according to the motion filed last week. “The evidence that the live ammunition came from Kenney is therefore favorable to Baldwin, which is why the State buried it,” the filing said last week.
In a chaotic hearing that lasted for hours on Friday, investigators testified that they and Morrissey determined the ammunition was not relevant to the “Rust” case and therefore did not turn it over to the defense. Morrissey also testified that investigators determined the ammunition did not match what was found on the “Rust” set and had no evidentiary value. The lead investigator, however, testified that the bullets appeared “similar” to the fake bullets on the film set.
Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer found that prosecutors failed to properly turn over evidence to the defense. She dismissed Baldwin’s case for prejudice, meaning it cannot be resubmitted.
In the court filing Tuesday, Gutierrez Reed’s attorneys said prosecutors — and even Gutierrez Reed’s defense team itself — were aware of Teske’s ammunition before he turned it over to the sheriff’s office in March. His attorneys wrote Morrissey an email in January saying it was “important to compare the powder from Teske’s bullets to the powder from the live rounds found on the Rust set,” the court filing Tuesday said.
Morrissey responded that she had no intention of retrieving or testing the bullets because she found them visually different and irrelevant, Gutierrez Reed’s attorneys said in the court filing Tuesday.
But on Friday, at Baldwin’s trial, Morrissey claimed that Gutierrez Reed’s attorneys did not want the bullets Teske had because they incriminated their client, Tuesday’s court filing said.
“This is an absolute lie. … Far from distancing themselves from the Teske bullets, defense attorneys acknowledged their potential exculpatory value if the State had tested them,” the court filing states.
Teske had turned the bullets over to the sheriff’s office in March, hoping it would test them “while Gutierrez Reed pursued his appeal,” the court filing Tuesday said.
“Instead, the state placed them in a separate file and attempted to hide them,” Gutierrez Reed’s attorneys wrote in Tuesday’s filing.
In the court filing Tuesday, the attorneys argued that an interview with Kenney, the prop supplier, was redacted — and that attorneys would have used his statements during cross-examination at Gutierrez Reed’s trial if they had known about them. In that interview, Kenney spoke about her experience and did not hear allegations that she was unsafe, among other things, the attorneys wrote.
A report by state firearms experts was also not made available to Gutierrez Reed’s attorneys, and the state did not disclose it to Baldwin’s defense team until after Gutierrez Reed was convicted, the court filing Tuesday said. The report said the gun used in the “Rust” shooting had “unexplained tool marks on critical surfaces of the trigger and sear,” the court filing Tuesday said.
Gutierrez Reed’s lawyers had already made that argument in a separate court filing, reported by Reuters last month, asking that a court release her from prison. The findings of firearms experts show that the gun could have gone off accidentally and could have led to her not being convicted in the case, Gutierrez Reed’s lawyer Jason Bowles said last month, according to Reuters.
Gutierrez Reed’s defense team “also became aware of approximately 900 additional pages of documents” related to state witnesses that were disclosed to Baldwin’s attorneys shortly before his trial, but not to Gutierrez Reed’s attorneys, Tuesday’s filing said.
His lawyers were “still reviewing these documents at the time of filing this motion,” the filing states.
The state violated Gutierrez Reed’s due process rights by failing to disclose evidence, his attorneys wrote in the filing Tuesday.
“On July 12, the court declared that the integrity of the judicial system required that the court dismiss Mr. Baldwin’s case with prejudice,” the filing states. “How could it be otherwise in Ms. Gutierrez Reed’s case, with this proven litany of serious abuses of process?”
“The intentional withholding of crucial evidence… “The state’s violation of the law compromised the integrity of the entire judicial process,” the filing continues.
Gutierrez Reed had already appealed his conviction in May.
CNN’s Dalia Faheid contributed to this report.
This story has been updated with additional information.