Rust armorer found guilty

[Crowbob]

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins

Baldwin has stuck with that story. This in spite of the fact that the FBI forensics lab determined that that revolver could not have fired unless the trigger was pulled. An independent forensics lab came to the same conclusion after the FBI reached theirs. They had to actually break off either the full cock notch on the hammer, or the end of the trigger, to make it fire without pulling the trigger. The gun both received was undamaged, they broke it in testing and rebuilt it.

Are you saying the FBI and the independent lab each received an intact firearm identical to the one Baldwin used and that both ended up broken?

Or are you saying the actual firearm used by Baldwin was broken and rebuilt?

[craigster59]

Originally Posted by Steve Carlton

Craig- do you think Baldwin has liability as an actor for pointing the gun where he did and pulling the trigger?

I think he has liability as a producer for hiring a 26 year old with one film on her resume' (which also had accidental discharges) as his "firearm expert". He was clearly putting saving dollars before safety.

As far as pointing a gun and pulling the trigger, as an actor you do what the script and director tell you to do and you expect to perform these actions in a safe environment with qualified experts overseeing the whole process. This did not happen.

[craigster59]

Originally Posted by Crowbob

Are you saying the FBI and the independent lab each received an intact firearm identical to the one Baldwin used and that both ended up broken?

Or are you saying the actual firearm used by Baldwin was broken and rebuilt?

FBI and lab inspected the actual firearm. It was broken in testing from what I understand. That was the only way that the gun fired without pulling the trigger.

Look, I've spent 37 years in the business, working with props and have done many "gun heavy" films like Heat, Terminator 2, We Were Soldiers, American Sniper, NCIS Los Angeles and many more. There are times we had 3-5 armorers working on the shows.

You have safety meetings the morning of "gun days". You have safety meetings when the guns are brought on set. You yell "Hot Gun!" when handing it to an actor. You immediately take possession of the gun after the director says "cut!". All of these happen on a normal film set.

What doesn't happen is hiring an inexperienced 26 year old with purple and green hair to be your "firearms expert". That's Alec Baldwin's culpability as a producer in this tragedy.

[Sooner or later]

Thanks for your input, Craigster.

[sc_rufctr]

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins

...

How many here believe that poor woman would still be alive today had Baldwin taken just a few seconds to check that revolver?

Yes she would be and that's how simple gun safety is.

[Crowbob]

Thank you, Craigster.

So if the actual gun, as a piece of evidence, was contaminated, is it still admissible? Can Baldwin argue that it cannot be proven, by virtue of the evidence having been broken and repaired, that the actual firearm COULD NOT have fired a live round without pulling the trigger?

It sounds like the examiners of the firearm broke it. As such, the actual firearm is not in the same condition as it was when Baldwin killed the women without having pulled the trigger.

[craigster59]

Originally Posted by Crowbob

Thank you, Craigster.

So if the actual gun, as a piece of evidence, was contaminated, is it still admissible? Can Baldwin argue that it cannot be proven, by virtue of the evidence having been broken and repaired, that the actual firearm COULD NOT have fired a live round without pulling the trigger?

It sounds like the examiners of the firearm broke it. As such, the actual firearm is not in the same condition as it was when Baldwin killed the women without having pulled the trigger.

From my understanding they tried all kinds of different ways to make it fire without pulling the trigger including bumping it, dropping it, hitting it with a hammer, etc. That's how it was broken.

The bottom line is the film company was cheap. My friend initially interviewed for the prop master job but they didn't want to pay his rate and he saw the writing on the wall when he suggested making rubber guns, inert guns, etc. of the "hero" gun AB was was going to use in the film for scenes where they didn't need to have a "hot gun" on set. They told him they hadn't budgeted for that and weren't going to "go in that direction".

I spoke with fellow Pelican HughR and put him in touch with an armorer friend when he was possibly going to be involved in the prosecution/defense of the incident. I don't know if anything came of that, last we spoke he was "off the case". Maybe he can chime in if he is not involved in AB's case.

[Tervuren]

Thanks for all your input on all of this as well.

Originally Posted by craigster59

It would still involve unloading the firearm and checking each round for the rattle of a BB or a hole in the side of the casing and then reloading.

If the gun was loaded with prop casings and bullets checking if it wasn't loaded wouldn't make sense.
It'd appear loaded even without live ammo.
As mentioned, this isn't a shooting range.

[daepp]

Originally Posted by Bugsinrugs

Can anyone explain why there were live rounds on the set??? What was the purpose?

My understanding is that they were using the live rounds for target practice when they were bored.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by daepp

My understanding is that they were using the live rounds for target practice when they were bored.

Right, I remember there being talk about "after hours plinking".

[Scott Douglas]

I'm kind of surprised OSHA or SAG hasn't come out and made it mandatory that no gun be able to fire a live round while making a movie.

[Steve Carlton]

What the ‘Rust’ Jury Heard About How Live Rounds Got on a Film Set

The prosecution pointed to a photo of the film’s armorer, arguing she had brought the live rounds. Her lawyers tried to focus attention on the movie’s primary ammunition supplier.

By Julia Jacobs

Reporting from Santa Fe, N.M.
Published March 7, 2024Updated March 8, 2024, 9:37 a.m. ET

Ever since a real, live bullet discharged from the gun that Alec Baldwin was rehearsing with on the set of the film “Rust” in 2021, killing the cinematographer and wounding the director, one question has vexed everyone involved: How did live ammunition end up on a film set, where — all agree — it absolutely should never have been?

The film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, was found guilty on Wednesday of involuntary manslaughter in the death of the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and faces up to 18 months in prison. (Mr. Baldwin is scheduled to stand trial in July on a charge of involuntary manslaughter.) The jury found that Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, 26, had behaved negligently by failing to check that all of the rounds she loaded into Mr. Baldwin’s revolver were dummies, which are inert rounds that look real but cannot be fired.

The question of where the live ammunition came from in the first place has hung over the case from the start. The original investigation by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office did not reach a conclusion on where the live rounds had come from.

During the trial, prosecutors sought to convince jurors that it was Ms. Gutierrez-Reed who was responsible for bringing the rounds onto the set. The defense asserted that Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, who did not testify, was not at fault, and tried to focus attention on the movie’s primary weapons and ammunition supplier, Seth Kenney, who took the stand and denied responsibility.

Here is what emerged during the trial about the live ammunition, and where it may have come from.

Prosecutors zeroed in on a box of rounds from the set.

When investigators arrived at the chaotic scene shortly after the shooting, on Oct. 21, 2021, Ms. Gutierrez-Reed showed a lieutenant from the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office a cart where she kept guns and ammunition and drew his attention to a box of ammunition where she said that she had retrieved the rounds she put in Mr. Baldwin’s revolver.

“So here’s the box that I got them out of,” Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, visibly shaken, told the lieutenant, Tim Benavidez, according to body-camera footage that was shown to the jury.

On the witness stand, Lieutenant Benavidez said that Ms. Gutierrez-Reed had shown him a rectangular white box labeled “45 LONG COLT DUMMIES.” Jurors were shown a photograph of the box that was taken in his patrol vehicle.
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Investigators found a live round in that box. It was one of six known to be on the film set, which included the one that killed Ms. Hutchins; two that were discovered on top of the prop cart; one that was in a gun belt assigned to an actor and one in the gun belt assigned to Mr. Baldwin, who was playing a grizzled outlaw in the movie.

In a later police interview that was played for the jury, Ms. Gutierrez-Reed said that she had supplied two boxes of dummies to the “Rust” production that had been left over from another production she had worked on. She said that she had taken them from a bag, where they had been kept loose, and checked that they were dummies before putting them into boxes.

When Cpl. Alexandria Hancock, the lead investigator on the case, asked Ms. Gutierrez-Reed during that interview what those boxes looked like, Ms. Gutierrez-Reed showed her a photo on her phone.

“Does this look exactly like the box of dummies that Mr. Benavidez took from the prop cart on Oct. 21, 2021?” Kari T. Morrissey, the lead prosecutor, asked Corporal Hancock at trial, showing the jury the photo that Ms. Gutierrez-Reed had displayed.

“Yes, it looks exactly like it,” she replied.

The prosecution said another photo pointed to Ms. Gutierrez-Reed as the source of the live rounds.

One of the prosecution’s key pieces of evidence was an iPhone photo of Ms. Gutierrez-Reed in which she is holding a gun and has a tray of ammunition sitting on her lap. Sarah Zachry, the head of props on “Rust,” testified that she took the photo on Oct. 10 to ensure they were maintaining continuity on the production with regard to props.

The prosecution argued that at least two rounds visible in the tray on her lap, which have distinctive silver-colored primers, were live rounds. And they said that the fact that the photo was taken on Oct. 10 — two days before the production got more .45-caliber Long Colt dummy rounds from the film’s main supplier, Mr. Kenney — suggested that those live rounds had come from Ms. Gutierrez-Reed.

In her closing arguments, Ms. Morrissey compared the Styrofoam tray of rounds shown on Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s lap with a photo of the Styrofoam tray of rounds that was taken out of the box of ammunition that Lieutenant Benavidez retrieved after the shooting. She argued that both photos showed the same tray, and pointed out that one of the rounds — one with a silver primer, which the F.B.I. later determined was a live round — was “in the exact same position” as in the earlier photo.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we call that circumstantial evidence,” she said, after leading the jury through a long series of photographs to make the case. “But that’s a mountain of circumstantial evidence.”

Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s lead lawyer, Jason Bowles, told the jury that “you cannot tell a live round from a dummy by a picture.”

And Mr. Bowles said that jurors should not rely on the idea that the rounds found in those ammunition boxes were in the same containers they had been brought to the set in because “these rounds were loaded in and out of these boxes daily.” He said that “there’s reasonable doubt all over the place.”

Speaking outside the courthouse after the verdict on Wednesday, one of the jurors, Alberto Sanchez, said that the jurors had been convinced that Ms. Gutierrez-Reed had brought the live rounds to the set. “We think she did,” he said.

The defense tried to focus attention on the film’s supplier.

Ms. Gutierrez-Reed told investigators that the ammunition from the “Rust” set came from three sources: Mr. Kenney, herself and a supplier named Billy Ray.

Mr. Kenney and Ms. Zachry both testified that while Billy Ray had supplied the production with some dummy rounds, none were .45-caliber Long Colt rounds, the kind used in Mr. Baldwin’s gun.

Lawyers for Ms. Gutierrez-Reed sought to focus attention on Mr. Kenney, who testified that he supplied a single box of .45-caliber Long Colt dummy rounds to the “Rust” set.

When investigators searched Mr. Kenney’s office in Albuquerque, they recovered .45-caliber live ammunition that he had stored there. He testified that it came from another production before “Rust” — “1883,” a “Yellowstone” spinoff — where he worked with Thell Reed, a famous Hollywood armorer who is Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s stepfather.

Mr. Kenney testified that during that production, some cast members had left the set to shoot live ammunition — including some .45-caliber Long Colt rounds — in what he referred to as “cowboy training camp.”

Mr. Kenney testified that Mr. Reed had supplied the live rounds for “1883,” and said that after the training camp, Mr. Kenney had taken the remaining live ammunition — including more than 100 .45-caliber rounds — back to New Mexico with him.

Marissa Poppell, the crime scene technician who inventoried evidence from the set, testified that when investigators searched Mr. Kenney’s office and storage location, known as PDQ Arm & Prop, they recovered .45-caliber Long Colt live ammunition from a gray bin labeled “LIVE AMMO 1883,” which Mr. Kenney stored in the bathroom of his office.

“Did any of them look identical to the live rounds found on set?” Ms. Morrissey asked.

“No,” Ms. Poppell replied.

Ms. Poppell testified that the box of .45-caliber Long Colt dummy rounds that Mr. Kenney supplied to the set did not contain any live ammunition.

During his testimony, Mr. Kenney asserted that the live rounds could not have come from him because he had checked the dummy rounds, shaking them so that he could hear the rattle of a BB inside, a common way to show a round is inert.

The defense raised questions about the initial investigation.

Lawyers for Ms. Gutierrez-Reed have repeatedly highlighted the fact that the police’s search of Mr. Kenney’s office did not take place until more than a month after the fatal shooting, leaving open the potential for evidence tampering.

“A delay of a few days could be an issue,” testified Scott Elliott, a private investigator hired to aid the defense. “But a month is — you could do anything in a month.”

Why was some ammunition thrown out after the shooting?

Ms. Zachry, the head of props, testified that after the fatal shooting, she unloaded two other guns that had been loaded with what she believed to have been dummies and threw the rounds away in a trash can, and only told the police later in the investigation.

Ms. Zachry, who signed a cooperation agreement that protects her from prosecution as long as she testifies truthfully, denied that she had been trying to hide evidence.

“In a state of shock and panic,” she testified, “I think it was a reactive decision.”


https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/07/movies/rust-live-ammunition.html

[masraum]

Wow, ^ that ^ describes quite the sheiße-show.

My take is that the kid, was horrible at her job, and made huge mistakes that caused a tragedy.

[MMARSH]

Originally Posted by craigster59

As far as pointing a gun and pulling the trigger, as an actor you do what the script and director tell you to do and you expect to perform these actions in a safe environment with qualified experts overseeing the whole process. This did not happen.

That has been my thought as well.
Many years ago I played a hired hit man on the show "Arrest and Trial" I was handed a handgun with specific instructions to not manipulate it and to only give it back to them at the end of the scene.. I did several scenes where I pointed it at the actor I was trying to kill and pulled the trigger. This was a controlled environment.

As an "actor" I believed I was handed a prop by an expert and did what I was told. It didn't even begin to occur to me that I should check if the weapon was safe.

In contrast, in real life I would never think of pointing a gun at someone unless I was willing to kill them. All the guns I carry are always loaded with a round in the chamber and any gun handed to me would be checked and cleared. This is in environments where real ammo is used.

We use our real weapons with paint rounds in training scenarios all the time. Everybody is checked and double checked. You check yourself and you check others. Even though live rounds are not even allowed onto the training facility. In the scenarios, we point and shoot each other with the paint rounds. In 30 years, I'm not aware of any accidents, other then the paint rounds causing some good strawberries...

I just don't think it's realistic that every actor would even know how to clear a weapon or render it safe. I think that's the responsibility of the Armorer or the prop master whose supposed to be the expert.

In this case, I agree with Craig in that Alec Baldwin the producer is also responsible for hiring someone who obviously wasn't a expert. To mix a prop gun with live ammo on a set. That's just insane.

[KFC911]

^^^^ This .... 100% spot on.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by MMARSH

That has been my thought as well.
Many years ago I played a hired hit man on the show "Arrest and Trial" I was handed a handgun with specific instructions to not manipulate it and to only give it back to them at the end of the scene.. I did several scenes where I pointed it at the actor I was trying to kill and pulled the trigger. This was a controlled environment.

As an "actor" I believed I was handed a prop by an expert and did what I was told. It didn't even begin to occur to me that I should check if the weapon was safe.

In contrast, in real life I would never think of pointing a gun at someone unless I was willing to kill them. All the guns I carry are always loaded with a round in the chamber and any gun handed to me would be checked and cleared. This is in environments where real ammo is used.

We use our real weapons with paint rounds in training scenarios all the time. Everybody is checked and double checked. You check yourself and you check others. Even though live rounds are not even allowed onto the training facility. In the scenarios, we point and shoot each other with the paint rounds. In 30 years, I'm not aware of any accidents, other then the paint rounds causing some good strawberries...

I just don't think it's realistic that every actor would even know how to clear a weapon or render it safe. I think that's the responsibility of the Armorer or the prop master whose supposed to be the expert.

In this case, I agree with Craig in that Alec Baldwin the producer is also responsible for hiring someone who obviously wasn't a expert. To mix a prop gun with live ammo on a set. That's just insane.

This is what many of us think, but Jeff differs in that he believes that every actor should be responsible for treating every gun on a set like a real gun and being responsible for verifying the situation.

[MMARSH]

I know he does. Now, I'm sure we are gonna see at least seven paragraphs on why he feels that way.

[Tobra]

My understanding is a disbelief that basic gun safety is the same everywhere but on a movie set.

That is where I am at with it anyway, and it does not make a bit of sense to me.

[Zeke]

If manslaughter encompances hiring an inept person who becomes guilty of that charge, that's going to have a major effect. Chances are that as a producer Baldwin did not sit at the hiring desk and personally hire the woman. But we'll know in July.

That is unless he cuts his losses and gets a plea down to a lesser charge. I think the case is indirect enough that is a distinct possibility. Otherwise it would seem that the prosecution would need to prove first gross negligence in the hiring as well as GN in handling the firearm.

A long stretch for me. Understand, I am not passing any judgement of my own.

Furthermore, the live round in the holster belt seems really suspicious to me. Lots of discussion about the armorer, but not much about that particular piece, which may be considered a prop in the film vernacular.

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by Scott Douglas

Why should any gun being used in a movie even be capable of firing a live round?

Aren't movies supposed to be make believe?

I would bet things have changed now.

AFA 'make believe' I think trying to tell a fictional story is not necessarily a fantasy. Perhaps I don't understand what your definition of make believe is.

I also don't know what the script called for. If there is a "kill" in a movie, I guess you would call that make believe.

But you are right, no place for an actual firearm. I think the industry knows that now.