One mystery has plagued the Rust case from the very beginning: How did a live bullet ever get on a movie set to begin with?
At Alec Baldwin‘s involuntary manslaughter trial in Santa Fe on Thursday, jurors heard about one theory — and a so-called “good Samaritan” who came forward to investigators in the last few months purporting to have evidence of that theory — from Baldwin’s defense attorney Alex Spiro.
The dramatic revelation came on the second full day of Baldwin’s trial in the death of Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, and sparked a spirited rebuttal from prosecutor Kari Morrissey. Morrissey has long maintained that armorer Hannah Gutierrez was the source of the deadly bullet, and in a trial that ended in March, she convinced another Santa Fe jury that Gutierrez was guilty of involuntary manslaughter in Hutchins’ death.
But during Spiro’s cross-examination of Santa Fe County crime scene technician Marissa Poppell, the defense attorney said that new ballistics evidence had emerged after Gutierrez’s trial ended, and that investigators had not shared it with Baldwin’s defense team, nor with Gutierrez’s team, who could potentially use it on appeal. Spiro said that in recent months, an individual had walked into the Santa Fe sheriff’s department and turned in ammunition that came from the same source as the bullet that killed Hutchins.
Spiro referred to the person who came forward merely as a “good Samaritan,” but Morrissey later revealed him to be retired Arizona police officer Troy Teske, a friend of Gutierrez’s father, veteran Hollywood armorer Thell Reed.
“He told you it had to do with the Rust shooting, is that correct?” Spiro asked Poppell, of the ammunition Teske brought to sheriffs. She agreed. “He told you you had been duped by Seth Kenney, didn’t he?” Morrissey objected before Poppell could answer that question. Kenney, the owner of the prop firearms supplier for Rust, has previously denied any wrongdoing in the incident. Spiro asked Poppell if investigators had turned that newly provided ammunition over to the FBI, as it had the other Rust evidence, and Poppell said they had not. “Isn’t it the case that law enforcement likely has the matching rounds to the ammunition that killed Ms. Hutchins?” Spiro asked.
On her redirect of Poppell, Morrissey sought to wipe away the dramatic picture Spiro had painted of this “good Samaritan.” “Are you aware that Troy Teske is a close friend of Hannah’s father?” she asked. “Are you aware that Troy Teske had his own motivations for wanting to help Ms Gutierrez?”
A fair amount of the day was spent in this debate over the source of the deadly bullet, which in some ways feels like a side issue in this trial. Baldwin has never been suspected of bringing the live rounds onto the set — he’s on trial because, as special prosecutor Erlinda Ocampo Johnson said in her opening argument, he violated the “cardinal rule” of gun safety by pointing a gun at someone, cocking it and pulling the trigger. If Teske’s evidence is potentially exculpatory for anyone, it would seem to be Gutierrez, who is currently serving out an 18-month prison sentence at the Western New Mexico Correctional Facility.
But Spiro’s introduction of the issue did seem to bolster the point he made in his opening argument, that the state, in its casual treatment of potentially important evidence, had seemed more focused on getting Baldwin than in getting to the bottom of the tragic case.
The thorny issue of the source of the ammunition isn’t going away any time soon. The prosecution intends to call both Gutierrez and Kenney as witnesses. On Friday morning, in a hearing to be held before the Baldwin jury arrives in the courtroom, Gutierrez’s attorney Jason Bowles will try to make the case to Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer that the armorer should not be compelled to testify and potentially incriminate herself, because she is in the process of appealing her conviction.
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