‘Rust’ armorer gets 18 months in prison
Lack of remorse about fatality on film set cited
“Rust” armorer Hannah GutierrezReed has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after being found guilty of involuntary manslaughter last month in the 2021 shooting death of Halyna Hutchins.
Though Alec Baldwin, 66, pulled the trigger, a jury found Gutierrez-Reed had erroneously loaded a live round into a revolver he was using on the Santa Fe, New Mexico, movie set.
Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer addressed phone calls Gutierrez-Reed made from jail, citing comments she made to family and friends as evidence she had failed to take accountability.
“In your allocution you said you were sorry but not ... sorry for what you did,” Marlowe Sommer said. “It was your attorney that had to tell the court that you were remorseful.
“The word remorse: a deep regret coming from a sense of guilt for past wrongs,” she continued. “That’s not you.”
Gutierrez-Reed has been in custody since the Santa Fe jury found her guilty March 6. The movie set armorer faced up to 18 months in prison and a $5,000 fine for her role in the accidental shooting death of Hutchins, a cinematographer on the low-budget Western, in October 2021. Gutierrez-Reed’s lawyer, Jason Bowles, requested she be given probation as she had no previous criminal record.
State prosecutor Kari Morrissey asked that she be sentenced to the maximum 18 months due to a lack of remorse, citing the phone calls from jail in which Gutierrez-Reed also said the jury were “idiots” and the judge was “paid off.”
The jury took about two hours to reach its verdict, with one juror afterward saying Gutierrez had not done her job to ensure weapons safety on set.
Gutierrez-Reed opted to make a statement before the court, saying her “heart aches” for Hutchins’ family, friends and the film industry at large. The armorer requested the judge sentence her to probation, noting she would accept any classes she ordered.
“I am saddened by the way the media sensationalized our traumatic tragedy and portrayed me as a complete monster, which has actually been the total opposite of what’s in my heart,” she said.
Gloria Allred, lawyer for Hutchins’ parents and sister, shared personal statements and videos from Hutchins’ family, from Kyiv, Ukraine.
“Time does not heal,” Olga Solovey, Hutchins’ mother, said in Ukrainian. “... It gets worse and worse.”
She said no one involved in Hutchins’ death has expressed sympathy to her. “It’s very important to me that there is justice,” she continued.
Baldwin’s trial for his role in the shooting death of Hutchins begins July 10, after he was indicted in January of involuntary manslaughter.
Hutchins was fatally shot when Baldwin pointed his gun at the cinematographer and a live round went off as she set up a camera shot. The “30 Rock” actor has denied pulling the trigger. The FBI and an independent firearms expert have found the gun would not have fired without the trigger being pulled.
Baldwin’s lawyers urged a judge in March to dismiss the grand jury’s indictment against him, accusing prosecutors of “unfairly stacking the deck” against the actor.
In their response, state prosecutors Morrissey and Jason Lewis painted Baldwin as a demanding actor and producer of the project who did not heed directions from his director and changed his story about what happened during the shooting.