Armorer “Rust” wants a new trial, claims that prosecutors “buried” evidence about the weapon

Film Armorer who loaded live ammunition into Alec Baldwin’s gun before firing the fatal shot that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, wants a new trial based on “revelations” that prosecutors failed to provide her with “sensational exculpatory evidence” before she appeared before the jury that convicted her last March.

In a new motion seeking immediate release from prison filed Thursday in New Mexico, Gutierrez-Reed’s defense attorney, Jason Bowles, wrote that his client deserves a new trial because of “dishonesty and misconduct” by prosecutors. He argued that they “buried” key evidence by failing to turn over a written report from a firearms expert who analyzed the replica revolver at the center of the deadly Oct. 21, 2021, shooting on the set of the Western. Rust.

More from Rolling Stone

The existence of the report, and the fact that it was not shared with Gutierrez-Reed’s defense team, was the subject of extensive testimony from a firearms expert at an evidentiary hearing in Baldwin’s separate manslaughter trial Monday. The expert, Lucien Haag, testified that he wrote the disputed report last August as an addendum to two initial reports. Hired by prosecutors to reconstruct and analyze the gun after earlier tests by the FBI damaged the weapon in 2022, Haag said his third report focused on odd diagonal markings on some of the gun’s internal components. In the third report, he wrote that the unexplained markings “do not appear to be original manufacturing marks” or the result of damage sustained by the FBI.

“The State has withheld shocking exculpatory evidence that it had a constitutional obligation to disclose, which would have resulted in a fundamentally different trial and likely a different outcome,” Bowles wrote in a new motion obtained by Rolling Stone. “Delayed state disclosure is a textbook example of new evidence warranting a retrial.” (The lead prosecutor in the case, Kari T. Morrissey, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

During Monday’s hearing, Baldwin’s defense attorneys made extensive use of the third report in their motion to dismiss Baldwin’s murder case. They argue that the report supports their theory that the gun was somehow altered or damaged before it was put into Baldwin’s hands without the actor pulling the trigger. Morrissey told the court Monday that it was true that she never shared the report with anyone, but she called it a simple “mistake” that she was willing to admit. She maintains that the FBI tests conducted before the gun was damaged prove that Baldwin must have pulled the trigger.

Haag, for his part, testified Monday that he changed his mind after writing the August report, so it is no longer relevant. He said he now believes the diagonal marks were the result of an FBI technician hitting the gun with a rawhide hammer to see if it would fire without pulling the trigger. Haag said that at the time he wrote the report, he thought the hammer test was done with a precision camera. He later learned, before Gutierrez-Reed’s trial, that the hammer test was done “freehand,” so the angled marks made sense, he argued.

Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was convicted of manslaughter in New Mexico in the same Santa Fe courtroom where Baldwin is scheduled to face a jury in a manslaughter case next month. He is serving an 18-month sentence, during which he is appealing the verdict.

During Gutierrez-Reed’s trial, Haag made no mention of his third report and testified that he saw no evidence of modification or damage to the weapon from anything other than FBI testing. At Baldwin’s evidentiary hearing this week, he defended that testimony. “By the time of (Gutierrez-Reed’s) trial, I learned that he had not used any device to conduct the impact test. He did this without tools, and as soon as I learned about it, the possibility arose that his hammering would have had an angular element. That would explain it,” he claimed under aggressive cross-examination by Baldwin’s powerful lawyer, Alex Spiro.

Spiro questioned Haag about the fact that he first met the FBI technician who performed the test last week, on June 17. Haag acknowledged that was true, but again said he learned key details about the technician’s testing methods from prosecutors before Gutierrez-Reed’s trial.

“I did not meet face-to-face with (FBI technician) Zoom until January 17, but I was already aware of his methodology during the (Gutierrez-Reed) trial. It wasn’t clear from his notes. The prosecutor questioned him or asked him some questions and gave me this information. This made these diagonal marks fully explainable, only explainable by impact testing,” Haag testified on Monday.

New Mexico prosecutors told jurors during Gutierrez-Reed’s trial that she unknowingly brought live ammunition to Rust established and failed to follow basic gun safety rules. She was convicted of manslaughter, but acquitted of tampering with evidence. The judge overseeing her case is expected to rule Friday on Balwin’s claim that the FBI tests that damaged the gun deprived him of due process because he will never be able to personally test the gun to prove his claim that it fired accidentally without pressing the trigger.

Best of Rolling Stone