Hannah Gutierrez-Reed watches closing arguments in her manslaughter trial on Wednesday, March 6, 2024, in Santa Fe, New Mexico (via Law&Crime). Inset: Alec Baldwin holds a gun on the set of the movie “Rust” (Santa Fe Sheriff’s Office).
Attorneys for “Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, 26, filed a blistering motion on Wednesday based on rampant prosecutorial misconduct uncovered during the short-lived Alec Baldwin trial.
Last Friday, the manslaughter case against the famed actor was dismissed with prejudice amid revelations the state withheld ammunition evidence related to the shooting from the defense.
Now, Gutierrez-Reed’s attorneys say the “egregious prosecutorial misconduct” by special prosecutor Kari Morrissey necessitates the convicted woman’s release from prison, a new trial, or a dismissal.
The locus of the contested ammunition is a bit of an oddity.
During a markedly effective cross-examination of Santa Fe County crime scene technician Marissa Poppell last Thursday, defense attorney Alex Spiro pressed the state’s witness about a “good Samaritan” who turned over a container of ammunition to police.
That delivery, the defense argued, was in support of a “sabotage” theory of the case that held some mysterious person aimed to make the “Rust” armorer look bad and get her fired. The ammunition was said to be the same or similar to the kind of bullet that killed Hutchins when the gun Baldwin was holding discharged. Later, it was revealed former Arizona police officer Troy Teske supplied the ammunition.
On July 12, in a stunning courtroom volte-face, the special prosecutor called herself as a witness during a hearing over a defense motion to dismiss. Her goal appeared to be to bat down allegations that the state had not intentionally withheld the ammunition in question.
She did not succeed.
The state said the ammunition in question was not collected during the actual “Rust” investigation and, therefore, was not relevant to it. The defense claimed the decision about the bullets’ relevance was simply not one law enforcement was allowed to make — and in any event, should have been disclosed before the trial began.
First Judicial District Court Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer agreed with the defense. In a powerful ruling, she found the state culpable for willingly and deliberately trying to prejudice Baldwin.
Before that, the hearing contained numerous revelations and recriminations — with law enforcement witnesses telling vastly different stories about the decision to keep the Teske ammunition secret — including why it was filed under a separate case number.
In her 35-page motion for a new trial, Gutierrez-Reed accuses Morrissey of repeatedly lying to the court about the ammunition.
“Corporal Alexandria Hancock testified that Ms. Morrissey was in on the decision to file the Teske rounds in a separate file,” the motion reads — referring to the lead detective in the case. “On direct examination, however, Ms. Morrissey stated she never knew it would have a separate file number.”
The motion also accuses Morrissey of lying about why fellow prosecutor Erlinda Johnson quit in the middle of the hearing and the circumstances of how her former paralegal came to leave her office.
And that only skims the surface.
“Morrissey represented that undersigned counsel did not want the Teske rounds and believed they inculpated Ms. Guiterrez Reed,” the motion goes on. “That is an absolute falsehood.”
Testimony in Baldwin’s case was unclear about when Teske brought the rounds to law enforcement relative to Gutierrez-Reed’s trial. Some testimony suggested the rounds were delivered after the trial — other testimony suggested law enforcement did not have them until after.
The new trial motion makes clear Gutierrez-Reed’s attorneys were, in some ways, cognizant some rounds existed — but they had allegedly been told by Morrissey to forget about them “because she found them visually dissimilar” to the rounds that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on Oct. 21, 2021, “and not relevant.”
In Baldwin’s case, the heart of the defense complaint could be understood as arguing that the decision to forego mentioning the rounds, made unilaterally by law enforcement, was unacceptable. Essentially, the discovery violation was severe enough to result in a court viewing the misconduct as close to an intentional cover-up.
In Gutierrez-Reed’s case, however, the allegation is more stark.
In January 2024, Morrissey told Gutierrez-Reed’s counsel the rounds would not be tested by the FBI because of how they looked, the motion for a new trial alleges. And, moreover, that claim about how the ammunition looked was not even true, according to the motion.
“Astoundingly, Ms. Morrissey told this Court in the July 12, 2024, hearing that she had never seen these rounds until July 12 during the evidentiary hearing,” the motion goes on. “It was clear in the hearing that three of the rounds were visually like the Rust set rounds, which contradicted Ms. Morrissey’s statements in her January 8 email to undersigned and Ms. Morrissey’s in court statements [from] July 11 that the rounds were not visually similar.”
As for how the Teske evidence was kept hidden from Baldwin? The motion suggests the special prosecutor did it on purpose.
“Hancock testified that Ms. Morrissey was present for the meeting and decision to place the rounds in a separate case file,” the motion continues. “In other words, Special Prosecutor Morrissey was in on the decision to hide the rounds and report on them in another file.”
On March 6, 2024, Teske himself took the initiative and delivered the rounds to the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office. That same day, Gutierrez-Reed was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
“The repeated discovery failures are certainly beneath was Ms. Gutierrez-Reed deserved,” the motion argues. “And for her, the impact has been devastating. She now sits in state prison, serving an 18-month sentence based on what we now know was a proceeding that was rendered unfair and unconstitutional by the State’s conduct. This Court should not countenance the State’s deplorable behavior.”
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
