In a Santa Fe, New Mexico, courthouse jurors last week watched video of actor Alec Baldwin rushing from a shack and blazing away with his Colt .45 “Peacemaker” revolver until he runs out of rounds.
“One more, one more, one more, right away, let’s reload,” Baldwin tells Hannah Gutierrez, the chief weapons handler on the set of the movie “Rust”, saying she should have had a second gun already loaded. After just three hours of deliberations Wednesday, jurors convicted Gutierrez of involuntary manslaughter.
Prosecutors had charged that Gutierrez rushed the handling of weapons, while failing to tell Baldwin, who was acting, not to point a gun at people or pull the trigger after a take.
Prosecutors used videos taken on the set to portray a breakdown of movie-industry firearm safety during the filming of “Rust.” The chaos was the backbone of the case over the 2021 death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
While setting up a scene, a video showed, Baldwin pointed a revolver at Hutchins; the weapon fired and fatally struck the cinematographer with a live round that had been mistakenly loaded by Gutierrez.
Even as Gutierrez stood trial, witnesses – including people who worked with her on “Rust” and firearms experts – touched on Baldwin’s role in the shooting. Some of the testimony suggested he was negligent and held a disproportionate amount of power on a set where he was a producer, writer and lead actor.
