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Oct. 6—A state district judge has ordered the producers of Rust to turn over copies of its agreements with actor Alec Baldwin, documents prosecutors and defense attorneys both agree could be relevant to the film armorer’s defense against manslaughter charges.
These agreements, special prosecutor Kari Morrissey told District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer on Friday, are important in part to explore Hannah Gutierrez Reed’s defense that she had requested and been denied the opportunity for more time to train Baldwin in handling the firearms used on set.
Morrissey said the agreements could show whether Baldwin, who is also a producer on the film, was to receive part of the profits from the movie and would benefit from denying Gutierrez the additional days to train him because she was paid more when serving as armorer than in her other capacity as an assistant prop master for the set.
Baldwin “obviously” had needed the additional training, Morrissey remarked, calling the accidental shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins a direct result of the production company cutting corners to keep costs low and profits high.
Gutierrez-Reed’s attorney Todd Bullion said he agreed with most of what Morrissey had said.
“We believe the documents are material and will be exculpatory to my client,” he said. “She did request more training days.”
Baldwin and Gutierrez-Reed both were charged with involuntary manslaughter after the 2021 death of Hutchins, who was fatally wounded after a gun held by Baldwin discharged a live round during a rehearsal on the movie set south of Santa Fe.
Special prosecutors dismissed the charge against Baldwin in April. Filming on Rust resumed in Montana earlier this year and is now finished.
Rust Movie Productions LLC argued it should not have to produce the documents because the criminal charges against Baldwin have been dismissed and the records were not relevant in the case still pending against Gutierrez-Reed.
However, the judge said the rule at issue was based primarily on whether the information requested by a subpoena was an “undue burden,” not relevancy.
“Most of your argument was on relevancy. … I haven’t heard that it is an undue burden,” Marlowe Sommer said.
Morrissey accused Rust LLC of having “intervened, interfered [in] or obstructed” the criminal investigation into the shooting from the outset, saying the company had a lawyer on scene 30 to 60 minutes after the incident “running around talking to witnesses before police could talk to those witnesses.”
Since then, she said, the state has issued numerous subpoenas to Rust Productions and the company has either not responded or responded “very, very slowly and requested a protective order.”
“Rust has a financial incentive to keep everything quite and secret [and] should not be controlling the criminal investigation of this case, and they have done it since day one. … Everything this production company does is to prevent bad information about their employees [Baldwin and Gutierrez-Reed] from coming to light,” Morrissey said.
The company’s attorney Abigail Wolburg told the court Rust Movies is not a party to the case and called the prosecutor’s remarks “inflammatory” and “not accurate.”
The next scheduled hearing is a status conference set for January. The case is scheduled to go to trial in February.