(Santa Fe) The gunsmith’s lawyers from the film Ruston trial in the United States for the accidental death in 2021 of the director of photography of this western, pointed the finger on Thursday at the responsibility of actor and producer Alec Baldwin, who was holding the weapon at the time of the shooting.
The first arguments were delivered this morning in the trial in Santa Fe, New Mexico, of Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, responsible for the management of weapons on Rust.
Filming turned into drama in October 2021 on a ranch in New Mexico, a state in the southwest of the United States. Alec Baldwin had pointed a revolver supposed to contain only blank bullets, but a very real projectile had killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza.
Like Alec Baldwin, the 26-year-old gunsmith is being prosecuted for manslaughter, a crime punishable by 18 months of imprisonment.
And if the actor faces trial at a later date, his name was quickly mentioned during opening arguments Thursday.
“Mr. Balwin, one of the main producers, the main actor in the film, was in effective control of the filming,” said Jason Bowles, lawyer for Hannah Gutierrez-Reed.
“You’re going to hear (during the trial) that he broke some of the most basic gun safety rules,” he said.
“He’s the one who broke them. It wasn’t Mshe Gutierrez-Reed,” the lawyer added.
” Scapegoat “
The prosecution, for its part, began to paint an image of the gunsmith as someone who was constantly “negligent and unprofessional.”
The evidence “will show that the defendant treated safety protocols as if they were optional, rather than as if people’s lives depended on her doing her job properly,” prosecutor Jason Lewis said. .
One of the questions at the heart of the trial, which is expected to last two weeks, will be to determine how a real bullet could have ended up in the revolver held by Alec Baldwin.
Prosecutors showed a photo of Hannah Gutierrez-Round that they say shows a live bullet lying in her lap, more than a week before the tragedy.
“This demonstrates that the live bullet could not have been delivered by anyone other than Mr.she Gutierrez,” Jason Lewis said.
But Jason Bowles disputed this, arguing that it was impossible to distinguish a live bullet from a blank based on a photo alone.
The defense lawyer pointed to flaws in the evidence collected by investigators and claimed that the film’s producers wanted to make Hannah Gutierrez-Reed a “scapegoat.”
“Deplorable idea”
According to him, his client was responsible for two tasks on Rustboth a gunsmith and a prop assistant.
She had to concentrate on rolling “cowboy cigarettes” rather than being allowed to spend time on gun safety, the lawyer said.
Having a “part-time gunsmith” on a film with so many weapons was a “bad idea, but that’s what they did,” said Jason Bowles.
The lawyer denounced the pressure put, according to him, by production to do things quickly, out of greed.
A trial date for Alec Baldwin has not yet been set.
The 65-year-old actor denies pulling the trigger and has always maintained that he was assured his weapon was harmless.
The involuntary manslaughter charges against him were first lifted last April, after new investigative elements could support the theory of an inadvertent shooting.
But he was charged again in January. Because according to the magazine Varietya new assessment of the weapon in question, carried out this summer, concluded that it could only have been triggered by pressing the trigger.