“Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed is asking a judge to overturn her conviction, alleging she was subject to the same sort of prosecutorial misconduct that torpedoed the Alec Baldwin trial last week.
Gutierrez Reed was convicted in March of manslaughter in the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. In a motion filed Tuesday, attorney Jason Bowles stated since then, he has received substantial evidence that should have been disclosed before the trial.
Bowles also asked that Gutierrez Reed be released from prison, and that special prosecutor Kari Morrissey be removed from the case due to misconduct. District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies has expressed her continued support for Morrissey.
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On Friday, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer found that the state’s withholding of evidence warranted dismissing Baldwin’s manslaughter case with prejudice.
“How can it be any different with Ms. Gutierrez Reed’s case, with this proven litany of serious discovery abuses?” Bowles argued in his motion. “The intentional withholding of crucial evidence… by the State has compromised the integrity of the entire judicial process.”
Baldwin’s case collapsed after it was revealed that a retired police officer had turned over a cache of bullets to investigators on March 6. Information about those bullets — three of which appeared to match the round that killed Hutchins — was never conveyed to Baldwin’s defense team.
Bowles argues that similar failures also impacted Gutierrez Reed’s trial. He states that a month after the trial was over, Morrissey provided him a previously undisclosed interview of Seth Kenney, the weapons supplier who was a key witness in the case.
Bowles argues that he could have used that interview to impeach Kenney on the witness stand. The motion quotes Kenney as offering positive comments about Gutierrez Reed’s level of experience, and giving conflicting statements about the possibility of sabotage on set.
Bowles also states that he never received a supplemental report from the state’s firearms expert, Lucien Haag, which cited “unexplained toolmarks” on Baldwin’s gun. He called that “bombshell exculpatory evidence” that “would have resulted in a fundamentally different trial and likely a different outcome.”
The report came to light in May, during pre-trial proceedings in the Baldwin case. At the time, Baldwin’s lawyers sought a dismissal under Brady v. Maryland, arguing that the state had prejudiced the case by withholding exculpatory evidence.
Marlowe Sommer denied that motion. The judge did not dispute that the report was suppressed or that it was favorable to the defense, but found that since it was ultimately turned over before trial, the defense could still use it, and thus Baldwin was not prejudiced.
The same analysis would not apply in Gutierrez Reed’s case, as she was already in prison at that point.
At a hearing in the Baldwin trial on Friday, Morrissey argued that the report was not helpful to Gutierrez Reed, as her defense was that the gun was working properly. Bowles countered in his motion that he could have used it to impeach Haag and to sow reasonable doubt about the foreseeability of the accident.
Bowles also stated that since the trial, he has become aware of an additional 900 pages of material relating to Haag and another state expert, Bryan Carpenter.
“The repeated discovery failures are certainly beneath what Ms. Gutierrez-Reed deserved,” Bowles argued. “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.”
In its pre-trial Brady motion, Baldwin’s defense team argued that the state had been “haphazard and careless” in its handling of discovery material. The defense cited dozens of gigabytes of information that it said had been disclosed months late, including numerous witness interviews, some of which were favorable to Baldwin.
Morrissey countered that she had fielded countless requests from Baldwin’s defense for additional information, which seemed to her to have little to no value to the defense other than consuming the prosecution’s time. She also said she had not suppressed evidence.
“To the contrary, the prosecution has disclosed more than is required,” she wrote.
