Convicted “Rust” Weaponsmith Hannah Gutierrez Reid‘s lawyers are asking the state of New Mexico to release her from prison. Alec Baldwin’s case Dismissed.
Jason Bowles filed a motion on Tuesday for a new trial or dismissal, citing “serious and continuing discovery violations by the state,” according to court documents obtained by NBC News.
Court documents call the violations of discovery orders revealed during Baldwin’s trial last week “egregious.”
The motion for her release came after Baldwin’s criminal trial was surprisingly denied on Friday, when First Judicial District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer determined that Special Prosecutor Kari T. Morrissey had concealed evidence related to live ammunition in connection with the 2021 fatal on-set shooting that killed cinematographer Halina Hutchins.
“There is no way for the court to right this error,” Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer told the court. “The sanction of dismissal is the only just remedy.”
The dismissal is pending appeal, meaning the manslaughter case against Baldwin cannot be refiled.
Baldwin’s lawyers argued that the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office seized live ammunition as evidence but did not record it in the official case file or disclose its existence to the actor’s legal team.
Morrissey argued that the ammunition in question was not connected to the incident and had not been concealed from Baldwin’s lawyers.
“I think the importance of the evidence was misconstrued by the defense,” Morrissey told reporters outside court.
In a separate trial in March, Reid was found guilty of manslaughter and subsequently sentenced to 18 months in prison.
In the filing, Bowles also asked that Morrissey be “removed from his position as Special Counsel due to the misconduct and violations uncovered in the Gutierrez-Reed case.”
NBC News has reached out to Morrissey for comment.
“The judge made an entirely correct decision based on the law and the facts. The judge found that the state committed misconduct. There are a lot of emotions that have come up. It’s heartbreaking to look at Mr. Baldwin and what he went through, what Hannah Gutierrez Reed is going through right now in prison, and that the state has committed a pattern of discovery violations,” Bowles said in an interview last week.
