After nearly two years on trial, a New Mexico judge convicted Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed to involuntary manslaughter. According to the judge, Gutierrez Reed will begin serving an 18-month prison sentence on Monday.
Her sentencing came nearly a month after she was found guilty of the unintentional death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and the injuries sustained by director-writer Joel Souza. Gutierrez Reed was also found not guilty of tampering with evidence. When she was convicted, both the prosecution and the defense disagreed on the proper punishment.
Her defense team contended that Gutierrez Reed was the accused victim of an unsafe workplace and had expressed deep regret for Hutchins’ murder and the events that led up to it. Because of this, Jason Bowles requested that she be placed on probation and undergo rehabilitation.
Guttierez Reed echoed these feelings, requesting that the judge place him on probation rather than imprisoned. “When I took on Rust, I was young and inexperienced, but I took my job seriously.” Despite the lack of enough time, resources, and staffing, when things got bad, I simply did my best to deal with them,” she added. “The jury has found me in part at fault for this godawful tragedy, but that doesn’t make me a monster, that makes me human.”
However, the prosecution claimed that Guttierrez Reed was allegedly negligent and should never have been in command of guns. Prosecutor Kari Morrissey accused her of disregarding safety precautions and abandoning the set as soon as the gun misfired.
Morrissey claims that, despite holding six live rounds, she “failed to ferret them out for 12 days.” That means she wasn’t shaking dummy rounds or testing anything. Because of this, the team advocated for an 18-month sentence, the maximum for involuntary manslaughter.
Even the New Mexico judge expressed similar emotions in his final sentencing reading. He ignored Guttierez Reed’s purported regret and repentance, noting that she “said [she was] sorry, but not [that she] was sorry for what you did.” The judge declared, “Ms. Hutchins would be alive, a husband would have his partner, and a little boy would have his mother” if Gutierrez Reed had fulfilled her duties. “You alone turned a safe weapon into a lethal weapon.”