A judge is planning to hear arguments in court Thursday over whether to dismiss a criminal conviction against a movie armorer in the shooting death of a cinematographer by actor Alec Baldwin.
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed has requested a retrial or dismissal of her March conviction for involuntary manslaughter in response to allegations that prosecutors failed to share evidence including ammunition that might have been exculpatory in the shooting death that occurred on the set of the Western movie “Rust” in 2021.
Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer is reconsidering the armorer’s conviction after throwing out an involuntary manslaughter case against Baldwin midtrial on similar grounds.
There should be outrage if everyone walks away from this without any real consequences, there was significant negligence and disregard for safety on the movie set and it resulted in a death. This conviction should be overturned anyway. There isn’t even the illusion of fairness or justice when the state is allowed to hide and even destroy evidence as they have in this case. For the state to strip rights and freedoms from a person it is incumbent upon the state to prove that the person has committed the crimes of which they have been accused and to do so in a fair and open process.
This, exactly.
Cops love up push lines like “Getting off on a technicality” when mistrials happen. They can get fucked. It’s not a “technicality”, it’s the police violating rules that exist to ensure that people are judged fairly and they convictions are only found in cases of genuine guilt. Those rules fucking matter, because they’re one of the very few things that prevent the police from abusing their power.
Hannah Guiterrez isn’t “getting off with a slap on the wrist.” She was convicted of manslaughter. That’s a really serious charge. If that conviction is overturned, it will be because the justice department did an absolutely piss poor job of following some really basic rules. Any outrage over that should be directed at the people who fucked up a perfectly good conviction by thinking they could just trample over people’s basic rights without consequence.