'Rust' armorer loses bid for new trial

The manslaughter conviction for the armorer on the Alec Baldwin movie "Rust" will stand, a US judge ruled Monday, dismissing her argument that withheld evidence could have changed the jury's verdict.

Hannah Gutierrez was in charge of weapons on the set of the budget Western film when a gun Baldwin was holding went off, killing the film's cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounding its director.

The 27-year-old was sentenced to 18 months in prison after being convicted of involuntary manslaughter for accidentally loading Baldwin's prop gun with a live round.

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Baldwin's own trial spectacularly collapsed in July when it emerged that prosecutors had not turned over a batch of bullets that detectives had found during their investigation into the October 2021 tragedy in New Mexico.

Gutierrez, also known as Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, was already in the process of appealing her conviction prior to the Baldwin trial.

But her lawyers then filed an expedited motion for a new trial or dismissal of charges due to "severe and ongoing discovery violations by the state."

That application was dismissed in a written ruling issued Monday.

"Defendant has not established that there is a reasonable probability that, had the evidence been available to Defendant, the evidence would have produced a different verdict," Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer wrote.

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