Ever since a real, live bullet discharged from the gun that Alec Baldwin was rehearsing with on the set of the film “Rust” in 2021, killing the cinematographer and wounding the director, one question has vexed everyone involved: How did live ammunition end up on a film set, where — all agree — it absolutely should never have been?
The film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, was found guilty on Wednesday of involuntary manslaughter in the death of the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and faces up to 18 months in prison. The jury found that Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, 26, had behaved negligently by failing to check that all of the rounds she loaded into Mr. Baldwin’s revolver were dummies, which are inert rounds that look real but cannot be fired.
The question of where the live ammunition came from in the first place has hung over the case from the start. The original investigation by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office did not reach a conclusion on where the live rounds had come from.
During the trial, prosecutors sought to convince jurors that it was Ms. Gutierrez-Reed who was responsible for bringing the rounds onto the set. The defense asserted that Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, who did not testify, was not at fault, and tried to focus attention on the movie’s primary weapons and ammunition supplier, Seth Kenney, who took the stand and denied responsibility.
Here is what emerged during the trial about the live ammunition, and where it may have come from.
Prosecutors zeroed in on a box of rounds from the set.
When investigators arrived at the chaotic scene shortly after the shooting, on Oct. 21, 2021, Ms. Gutierrez-Reed showed a lieutenant from the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office a cart where she kept guns and ammunition and drew his attention to a box of ammunition where she said that she had retrieved the rounds she put in Mr. Baldwin’s revolver.
“So here’s the box that I got them out of,” Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, visibly shaken, told the lieutenant, Tim Benavidez, according to body-camera footage that was shown to the jury.
On the witness stand, Lieutenant Benavidez said that Ms. Gutierrez-Reed had shown him a rectangular white box labeled “45 LONG COLT DUMMIES.” Jurors were shown a photograph of the box that was taken in his patrol vehicle.
Investigators found a live round in that box. It was one of six known to be on the film set, which included the one that killed Ms. Hutchins; two that were discovered on top of the prop cart; one that was in a gun belt assigned to an actor and one in the gun belt assigned to Mr. Baldwin, who was playing a grizzled outlaw in the movie.
In a later police interview that was played for the jury, Ms. Gutierrez-Reed said that she had supplied two boxes of dummies to the “Rust” production that had been left over from another production she had worked on. She said that she had taken them from a bag, where they had been kept loose, and checked that they were dummies before putting them into boxes.
When Cpl. Alexandria Hancock, the lead investigator on the case, asked Ms. Gutierrez-Reed during that interview what those boxes looked like, Ms. Gutierrez-Reed showed her a photo on her phone.
“Does this look exactly like the box of dummies that Mr. Benavidez took from the prop cart on Oct. 21, 2021?” Ms. Morrissey asked Corporal Hancock at trial, showing the jury the photo that Ms. Gutierrez-Reed had displayed.
“Yes, it looks exactly like it,” she replied.
The prosecution said another photo pointed to Ms. Gutierrez-Reed as the source of the live rounds.
One of the prosecution’s key pieces of evidence was an iPhone photo of Ms. Gutierrez-Reed in which she is holding a gun and has a tray of ammunition sitting on her lap. Sarah Zachry, the head of props on “Rust,” testified that she took the photo on Oct. 10 to ensure they were maintaining continuity on the production with regard to props.
The prosecution argued that at least two rounds visible in the tray on her lap, which have distinctive silver-colored primers, were live rounds. And they said that the fact that the photo was taken on Oct. 10 — two days before the production got more .45-caliber Long Colt dummy rounds from the film’s main supplier, Mr. Kenney — suggested that those live rounds had come from Ms. Gutierrez-Reed.
In her closing arguments, Ms. Morrissey compared the Styrofoam bullet tray shown on Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s lap with a photo of the Styrofoam bullet tray that was taken out of the box of ammunition that Lieutenant Benavidez retrieved after the shooting. She argued that both photos showed the same tray, and pointed out that one of the rounds — one with a silver primer, which the F.B.I. later determined was a live round — was “in the exact same position” as in the earlier photo.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we call that circumstantial evidence,” she said, after leading the jury through a long series of photographs to make the case. “But that’s a mountain of circumstantial evidence.”
Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s lead lawyer, Jason Bowles, told the jury that “you cannot tell a live round from a dummy by a picture.”
And Mr. Bowles said that jurors should not rely on the idea that the rounds found in those ammunition boxes were the same containers they had been brought to set in because “these rounds were loaded in and out of these boxes daily.” He said that “there’s reasonable doubt all over the place.”
Speaking outside the courthouse after the verdict on Wednesday, one of the jurors, Alberto Sanchez, said that the jurors had been convinced that Ms. Gutierrez-Reed had brought the live rounds to the set. “We think she did,” he said.
The defense tried to focus attention on the film’s supplier.
Ms. Gutierrez-Reed told investigators that the ammunition from the “Rust” set came from three sources: Mr. Kenney, herself and a supplier named Billy Ray.
Mr. Kenney and Ms. Zachry both testified that while Billy Ray had supplied the production with some dummy rounds, none were .45-caliber Long Colt rounds, the kind used in Mr. Baldwin’s gun.
Lawyers for Ms. Gutierrez-Reed sought to focus attention on Mr. Kenney, who testified that he supplied a single box of .45-caliber Long Colt dummy rounds to the “Rust” set.
When investigators searched Mr. Kenney’s office in Albuquerque, they recovered .45-caliber live ammunition that he had stored there. He testified that it came from another production before “Rust” — “1883,” a “Yellowstone” spinoff — where he worked with Thell Reed, a famous Hollywood armorer who is Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s stepfather.
Mr. Kenney testified that during that production, some cast members had left the set to shoot live ammunition — including some .45-caliber Long Colt rounds — in what he referred to as “cowboy training camp.”
Mr. Kenney testified that Mr. Reed had supplied the live rounds for “1883,” and said that after the training camp, Mr. Kenney had taken the remaining live ammunition — including more than 100 .45-caliber rounds — back to New Mexico with him.
Marissa Poppell, the crime scene technician who inventoried evidence from the set, testified that when investigators searched Mr. Kenney’s office and storage location, known as PDQ Arm & Prop, they recovered .45-caliber Long Colt live ammunition from a gray bin labeled “LIVE AMMO 1883,” which Mr. Kenney stored in the bathroom of his office.
“Did any of them look identical to the live rounds found on set?” Ms. Morrissey asked.
“No,” Ms. Poppell replied.
Ms. Poppell testified that the box of .45-caliber Long Colt dummy rounds that Mr. Kenney supplied to the set did not contain any live ammunition.
During his testimony, Mr. Kenney asserted that the live rounds could not have come from him because he had checked the dummy rounds, shaking them so that he could hear the rattle of a BB inside, a common way to show a round is inert.
The defense raised questions about the initial investigation.
Lawyers for Ms. Gutierrez-Reed have repeatedly highlighted the fact that the police’s search of Mr. Kenney’s office did not take place until more than a month after the fatal shooting, leaving open the potential for evidence tampering.
“A delay of a few days could be an issue,” testified Scott Elliott, a private investigator hired to aid the defense. “But a month is — you could do anything in a month.”
Why was some ammunition thrown out after the shooting?
Ms. Zachry, the head of props, testified that after the fatal shooting, she unloaded two other guns that had been loaded with what she believed to have been dummies and threw the rounds away in a trash can, and only told the police later in the investigation.
Ms. Zachry, who signed a cooperation agreement that protects her from prosecution as long as she testifies truthfully, denied that she had been trying to hide evidence.
“In a state of shock and panic,” she testified, “I think it was a reactive decision.”
