With Alec Baldwin’s case dismissed, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, a convicted “Rust” armorer, is being asked to be released from prison by her attorneys in the state of New Mexico.
According to court documents obtained by NBC News, Jason Bowles filed a motion on Tuesday for a new trial or dismissal “for serious and persistent violations of discovery by the State”.
In a court filing, the discovery violation that was discovered during Baldwin’s trial last week was described as “egregious.”
The release motion for Baldwin follows the startling dismissal of her criminal trial on Friday by 1st Judicial District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer, who determined that special prosecutor Kari T. Morrissey had omitted evidence regarding live ammunition related to the 2021 on-set shooting that claimed the life of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
“The court cannot make this right,” presiding judge Mary Marlowe Sommer declared in court. “The sanction of termination is the sole appropriate remedy.”
Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter case cannot be reopened because of the dismissal with prejudice.
The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office seized live rounds of ammunition as evidence, according to Baldwin’s attorneys, but neither disclosed their presence to the actor’s defense team nor entered them into the official case file.
Morrissey said that neither the case nor Baldwin’s attorneys were aware of the contested ammo.
Morrissey told reporters outside the court, “I think the defense attorneys misinterpreted the significance of the evidence.”
In a different trial held in March, Reed was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and given an 18-month prison sentence.
Morrissey should “be dismissed from their position as Special Prosecutor in light of the misconduct discovered and the transgressions in Ms. Gutierrez Reed’s case,” according to Bowles’ request in the brief.
Bowles stated last week in an interview that “the judge made the proper conclusion on the law and the facts, without a doubt. The state was judged to have acted improperly by the judge. many different feelings. It’s heartbreaking, really, to see Mr. Baldwin and understand what he and Hannah Gutierrez-Reed were going through at the time of their imprisonment, as well as the state’s record of violations of discovery rights.”