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Armourer on Alec Baldwin film Rust loses bid for new trial

Hannah Gutierrez is serving an 18-month prison sentence for an involuntary manslaughter conviction

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Hannah Gutierrez at her manslaughter trial in Santa Fe, New Mexico. File photo: Albuquerque Journal via TNS

The manslaughter conviction for the armourer on the Alec Baldwin film Rust will stand, a US judge ruled on Monday, dismissing her argument that withheld evidence could have changed the jury’s verdict.

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Hannah Gutierrez was in charge of weapons on the set of the budget Western film when a gun Baldwin was holding went off, killing the film’s cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounding its director Joel Souza.

The 27-year-old was sentenced to 18 months in prison after being convicted of involuntary manslaughter for accidentally loading Baldwin’s prop gun with a live round.

Baldwin’s own trial spectacularly collapsed in July when it emerged that prosecutors had not turned over a batch of bullets that detectives had found during their investigation into the October 2021 tragedy in New Mexico.

Gutierrez, also known as Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, was already in the process of appealing her conviction before the Baldwin trial.

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But her lawyers then filed an expedited motion for a new trial or dismissal of charges owing to “severe and ongoing discovery violations by the state”.

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