‘Rust’ armorer’s alleged cocaine use, boozing to be included in upcoming manslaughter trial
The manslaughter trial of “Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed will be allowed to hear allegations that she was boozing and using marijuana and cocaine — including the night before Alec Baldwin fatally shot cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
New Mexico Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer ruled Wednesday that special prosecutors can present text messages in which Gutierrez-Reed, 26, alluded to drug use during her off time on the Santa Fe set.
Among messages she sent to other crew were some on Oct. 20, 2021 — the night before the fatal shooting — reading, “I might go smoke in the jacuzzi soon” and “headed down to get high out back,” Rolling Stone reports.
Prosecutors plan to use them to suggest the rookie armorer may have been hung over the next day when a live bullet was loaded into Baldwin’s prop revolver, the Los Angeles Times said.
They also reportedly plan to call a witness who claimed Gutierrez-Reed gave her a small bag with a white substance for safekeeping just hours after she was questioned by Santa Fe sheriff’s deputies.
That is tied to a charge of evidence tampering, which her defense lawyers tried to have dismissed, but state prosecutors successfully argued to keep.
“She brought live rounds onto a movie set. She failed to discover them for 12 days. She loaded one of them into a gun. It was then manipulated by an actor and very foreseeably, someone died,” prosecutor Kari Morrissey argued in court, according to Rolling Stone.
“She was taken to the police station to give a statement. After she got back from giving her statement, she took what appeared — and what our witness would testify — was a bag of cocaine, handed it to her and said, ‘Hang onto this for me’ because she was under police investigation.
“It’s the exact same connection you would see with any tampering charge,” she argued.
The deputies did not recover any evidence of drugs on the set during their investigation of the shooting, and film crew members were not tested for drugs or alcohol on the site, or when they arrived at the sheriff’s station for questioning later that afternoon, the LA Times reports.
Days later, prosecutors argue, Gutierrez-Reed sent the crew member a text saying, “Hey I might be coming to Albuquerque tonight and was wondering if I can get that stuff.”
When prosecutors later asked the woman what “stuff” Gutierrez-Reed was referring to, she reportedly responded “a bag of cocaine,” according to Rolling Stone.
But Gutierrez-Reed’s attorney, Todd Bullion, argued at the virtual pre-trial hearing Wednesday that the state has no evidence she was impaired on set the day of the fatal shooting.
He called disclosures about her drug use an overreach that could be prejudicial to the jury.
“They want the jury to assume that at some point prior to going to work on Oct. 21, 2021, that Ms. Gutierrez-Reed ingested cocaine,” he said, according to the LA Times.
“They have no evidence whether that actually happened,” Bullion argued. “They have no evidence to how much cocaine would have been consumed or how it would have affected Ms. Gutierrez-Reed or her mental perception or acuity.”
The defense attorneys instead plan to argue that Hutchins’ death was the result of a series of missteps brought about by extreme pressure from the production managers to finish the movie quickly.
Gutierrez-Reed has said she requested more time to train Baldwin on the weapons, but the production manager denied it, according to the LA Times.
She also claimed that on the only day she had to train Baldwin on how to use the guns, he was distracted on his phone, talking to his family back in New York.
Defense attorneys have also floated the theory she may have been the victim of sabotage and that the live rounds may have been come from prop supplier Seth Kenney, according to Rolling Stone.
They said at the hearing Wednesday they have “plenty of evidence” it was “someone else who brought live rounds on set.”
A report from New Mexico’s Occupational Safety Division previously concluded that producers were also to blame for Hutchins’ death by allowing for a work set rife with safety violations, according to the LA Times.
Sommer agreed those safety violations could be included in the defense’s arguments, and ruled that the text messages, as well as allegations that Gutierrez-Reed kept live ammunition in her hotel room, would be permissible in court.
But she also expressed doubt that the state had enough evidence to connect the alleged drug use to any impairment on set.
Gutierrez-Reed’s trial on involuntary manslaughter charges and a felony charge of alleged evidence tampering is scheduled to begin with jury selection next Wednesday.
If convicted of the involuntary manslaughter charges, she faces 18 months behind bars.
With Post wires
