Armourer on Alec Baldwin film Rust loses bid for new trial

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.

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.