The elderly father of Rust gunmaker Hannah Gutierrez-Reed welcomed the sudden dismissal of Alec Baldwin’s murder case and says his daughter’s conviction should now be overturned as well.
Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com, legendary Hollywood gunsmith Thell Reed, 81, said Hannah has been made a “scapegoat” for the tragic shooting death of producer Halyna Hutchins, 42, in October 2022.
Reed said: ‘Well, I think that’s a good thing (Baldwin’s dismissal). I think Hannah’s case should be dismissed as well.
“There’s a lot of evidence that hasn’t been heard at all. They suppressed all the important evidence and I guess Baldwin’s lawyers brought it to light.”
Legendary Hollywood gunsmith Thell Reed, 81, has said his daughter Hannah’s case should be thrown out after Alec Baldwin’s trial on the same charges was dismissed.
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed wipes away tears at her April 15, 2024 sentencing, where she was ordered to serve 18 months in prison.
Rust gunsmith poses for mugshot after being found guilty of manslaughter
Hannah, 27, was sentenced to 18 months in jail in April after being found guilty of a single charge of manslaughter.
She is currently serving her sentence at the Santa Fe County Adult Detention Center and was due to be called to the stand to testify in the Baldwin case.
Reed told DailyMail.com that she hopes the dismissal of Baldwin’s case will now give her daughter grounds to appeal her own conviction and said prosecutors have made her a scapegoat.
He added: “This should be grounds for appeal. She did nothing wrong. She has been made a scapegoat.”
Baldwin, 66, faced the prospect of nearly two years in prison if convicted of involuntary manslaughter in Hutchins’ death.
The Ukrainian mother of a child was shot in the chest during a rehearsal at the Bonanza Creek ranch outside Santa Fe during the filming of Baldwin’s western Rust.
Director Joel Souza, 51, was also injured in the incident but made a full recovery.
Harrowing footage shown during Baldwin’s trial, which was abruptly cut short, shows the aftermath of the shooting, with Hutchins seen being treated by medics on set.
Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins died after being hit by a bullet from the prop gun Baldwin was handling on the set of Rust in October 2021.
Thell Reed said he thought it was “good” that Alec Baldwin’s case was dismissed (pictured reacting with his attorney on Friday), but added that his daughter’s case “should be dismissed as well.”
Baldwin burst into tears and hugged his wife Hilaria when his manslaughter case was sensationally dismissed.
Moments earlier, Baldwin, dressed in traditional Western garb in his role as the eponymous Harland Rust, had been filmed waving his Colt Pietta .45 pistol.
The replica gun was supposed to contain only blanks, but was later found to have at least one real bullet inside.
He later claimed that he did not touch the trigger and that the gun could only have been fired by “sabotage”, although an FBI investigation later revealed that the gun could not have been fired from a half-cocked position as Baldwin had claimed.
Hannah, who at the time was working on her second film as a gunsmith, was the first to be charged and followed “a cascade of security breaches” by prosecutors in her case.
Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer, the same judge who dramatically dismissed Baldwin’s case, said in her ruling that he had turned “a safe weapon into a lethal weapon” by failing to keep live ammunition away from the set.
He added: ‘You were the gunsmith, the one standing between a safe gun and a gun that could kill someone.
“You just turned a safe gun into a lethal weapon. If it weren’t for you, Ms. Hutchins would be alive, a husband would have his partner, and a child would have his mother.”
Photos taken by detectives with the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office show the aftermath of the incident that occurred in October 2021.
The case was sensationally dismissed on Friday due to a disagreement over which bullets were admitted as evidence.
The 66-year-old actor was emotional to hear that the case against him was dismissed on Friday.
Baldwin holds hands with his wife Hilaria as he leaves court on Friday, moments after a judge dismissed his murder case.
Halls, who had handed the gun to Baldwin and told him it was “cold,” accepted a plea deal and was charged with misdemeanor negligent use of a deadly weapon.
He was also required to testify against Baldwin and served six months of unsupervised probation, paid a $500 fine and completed 24 hours of community service.
Baldwin was the last person to appear in court for Hutchins’ death and, like Hannah, faced a charge of involuntary manslaughter.
He had pleaded not guilty to the charges in January and the first day of the trial in Santa Fe, New Mexico, began with prosecutors accusing him of “reckless indifference to the safety of Ms. Hutchins.”
But the trial collapsed dramatically today, with the defense successfully arguing that the case be thrown out because the prosecution failed to share all the evidence with them, specifically the bullets brought to them by retired police officer Troy Teske, who said they were the same type used in Baldwin’s gun.
Baldwin, seen here outside the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s offices on the day of the shooting, had the charges filed against him twice.
Moments before the judge’s ruling, the court heard that one of the two special prosecutors, Erlina Johnson, had dropped the case.
In her ruling, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer said dismissal with prejudice was a “very extreme sanction” but that the threshold had been met.
He said the “suppressed evidence” had “impacted the fundamental impartiality of the case” and that prosecutors were “highly culpable” for errors and had “unilaterally concealed” details about the munitions.
The judge said the “willful withholding of information was intentional and deliberate,” which was “so close to bad faith as to show signs of searing prejudice” and that there was “no way for the court to correct this error.”
Prosecutor Kari Morrissey responded that they had interviewed Teske last year and were skeptical of him because he is close friends with Reed.
Morrissey said they concluded Teske was sending them on a “wild goose chase” to blame someone other than Hannah.
She said: ‘This is a man (Thell Reed) trying to protect his daughter and providing information that doesn’t even match the evidence that was found at the scene.’