Two years and four months after the death of Halyna Hutchins, there is finally someone in the dock.
This Wednesday the first trial began after the tragedy of the filming of
Rust
, which occurred on October 21, 2021. A real bullet was ejected that day from a revolver in the hands of Alec Baldwin, killing the director of photography and injuring the director of the film. independent western.
Hannah Gutierrez Reed, the person in charge of the production's armory and who loaded the gun, will be the first to respond to the accusations made by the New Mexico Prosecutor's Office in a process that will last until March 6.
This morning the selection of the jury that will determine the responsibility of Gutierrez Reed began in Santa Fe.
The gunsmith was 24 years old when the accident occurred.
The filmmaker has been charged with one count of manslaughter and another for destroying or altering evidence.
Gutierrez Reed has pleaded not guilty.
If so, the gunsmith could be sentenced by the court to a sentence of 18 months in prison and a fine of $5,000.
The trial against Alec Baldwin had been set for August, but has been postponed after a change in the presiding judge.
Both the defense and prosecutors have begun interviewing about 70 people from that region of New Mexico this morning.
From there the 12 members of the jury will come out.
The choice will be a difficult task.
The lawyers are looking for people who have not been so exposed to the robust media coverage that the case has generated since the end of 2021. Welders, teachers, students and housewives have been interviewed.
Some of these people don't even speak English, according to the Associated Press.
Half of the State's population is made up of Latinos.
Gutierrez Reed's defense aims to argue how his client, one of the youngest and least powerful people in the production, has been used as a scapegoat.
Rust
was only the second film job for the gunsmith, who began working in the industry in August 2021, when she made a western in Montana starring Nicolas Cage.
However, firearms are no strangers to her family.
Her stepfather is Thell Reed, an experienced Hollywood firearms consultant who worked on major productions such as
LA Confidential, Tombstone
and
The 3:10 Train
.
The defendant's lawyers want to point out the film's producers, including Baldwin himself, for the poor security measures that prevailed on the set located on a Bonanza Creek ranch.
On the day of the incident, a group of technicians had protested by leaving their jobs due to working conditions.
Gutierrez Reed admits to loading the .45 Colt revolver that killed Hutchins, who was 42 years old.
However, his lawyers claim that he tried to have Dave Halls, the assistant director, conduct a review before the rehearsal where the fateful accident occurred.
“I told [Halls] I needed to do a weapons check and he told me there was no time for that,” Gutierrez Reed said in a December 2022 deposition before a state workplace safety agency.
Halls, another defendant in the case, pleaded guilty to one count of negligence.
He received a sentence of six months' probation thanks to a court agreement.
The Prosecutor's Office has other plans for the gunsmith.
The prosecution lawyers intend to draw an unflattering profile of Gutierrez Reed under the court spotlight.
That of a careless employee who may have been under the influence of narcotics while she worked.
The charge of destruction of evidence that he faces stems from a bag with alleged drugs that Gutierrez Reed gave to a filming partner after the photographer's death.
In the next two weeks, about 40 people will come to court to give their testimony.
Among these are the police officers who found six real bullets among a sea of prop projectiles.
These were found in boxes, on a belt and a shoulder bag that were part of Baldwin's character's clothing.
The authorities believe that the gunsmith's responsibility was to have differentiated between blanks and real bullets.
The producers of the film have been fined $100,000 by the Government of New Mexico for all failures in security protocols.
The body in charge of Labor and Occupational Safety wrote a report in which it assured that those responsible for the film did not correct anything after a couple of previous accidents, where a couple of weapons were fired due to carelessness.