Rust and Related Lawsuits

[RVInit]

You are welcome.

I also forgot to mention something interesting that some may not be familiar with. On the day of the fatal shooting, Sarah Zachary had loaded two guns while Hannah had loaded Baldwin's gun. As soon as the shooting happened, Sarah made a call to Seth Keeney. That call lasted no longer than 30 seconds after which Sarah retrieved the two guns she loaded, removed the ammo from those guns, and threw it away in the trash can. It wasn't until her 2nd or 3rd interview with detectives when she showed up with a lawyer and admitted to having thrown away potential evidence.

[p0rtia]

For which the prosecutors wanted to blame Baldwin.

Body language report: Watched the 7 minute or so video of the judge giving her ruling. The camera was on the prosecutor, Kari Morrissey, occasionally. She was on the hot seat, obviously, so it was interesting to see how she took it. What I saw was a smorgasbord of wounded dignity, arrogance, and guilt. It was kind of spellbinding.

[andersweinstein]

Even if Branca is right, I suspect that an ethical prosecutor would have disclosed the envelope with bullets in it. If it is so immaterial and worthless to the defense, what's the harm in producing it? Produce it and be ready to explain it, if necessary. But this prosecutor stepped over the line and then testified falsely, in the judge's eyes. The judge didn't explicitly accuse the D.A. of perjury, but that was one ANGRY judge.

It does make failure to disclose especially stupid, I think, because this stuff wasn't obviously highly relevant. Branca also completely ignores the arguments for relevance in the defense motion. Defense had been arguing botched investigation and charging prosecutorial misconduct for some time and judge allowed some of that.

[RVInit]

Thanks RV, I read your post, but I haven't been following the case much. The story about the live rounds sounds scary and I don't claim to have followed the ins and outs.

This part:

Seth and Sarah texted each other about getting rid of Hannah, but wanted it to happen in a way that didn't involve either of them directly so they could pretend like they were not involved and were sorry she lost her job. They started doing things to stress her out, created a hostile work environment, etc. It seemed like they were trying to make it miserable enough that she would just quit.

As to the live rounds - this is what Friday showed - That Seth Kenney was the very likely source of those rounds. He had somewhere around 18 or 19 of those rounds when he went out of town with Thell and Teske.

is unsettling.

That surely raises the suspicion that these creeps took the potentially and in fact actually fatal move of salting Gutierrez-Reed's blanks with live rounds, or something like that, doesn't it?

I understand (I do not condone!!) trying to create a hostile workplace for someone, and that alone should raise suspicions, but that is murderously crazy!

Yeah, I hesitated before putting any of that in my post, but that was an overriding issue that was happening during this time frame. I don't think Kenney ever thought Hannah would fail to recognize a live round, but I don't put it past him to have created a situation where she could become so scared that might happen that she would throw in the towel and quit. The hostility they put her under was over the top.

Kenney was supposed to be nothing more than supplying guns and ammo all at one time, then not involved at all, then all the stuff returned to him. In fact, he was sticking his nose into every day of filming once Sarah had her accident and constantly helping to create a hostile environment for Hannah.

As soon as he found out there was a shooting on set, he raced down to the set and started Schmoozing with detectives like he was their best friend. In spite of having never walked on the set before, he was leading them around showing them what was important and what was not important. In spite of the fact that he had no business whatsoever having the combination to a safe that belonged to the production company, he clearly had gotten the combination from Sarah because he was the one inside that prop truck opening the safe and again, having NEVER stepped foot in that prop truck before he was directing them where to look for evidence.

Had I been an investigator on the set my first question for where the ammo came from would be who is your supplier and I would have had a search warrant for PDQ served on PDQ before he ever had a chance to know what hit him. That should have been number one. Instead, as soon as they found out that PDQ was the supplier of ammo, well, that was their best friend HELPING them look for evidence, he's a good guy, we can wait 45 days to even consider getting a warrant.

This whole investigation was a joke because on day one they knew Hannah and Baldwin and David Halls are going to be charged and anything that turns up that points to anything else is not going to be helpful so we can bury it and ignore it. We are looking only for evidence to support these three convictions.

[Maybenaut]

There is incontrovertible evidence that Sarah Zachary and Seth Kenney were looking for ways to get Hannah fired from the job after Seth was the one responsible for her being hired in the first place. This whole thing went off the rails the moment the director of this movie reneged on his responsibility to hire an ADULT prop master. It is the director that chooses the department heads. The department heads then choose the people who will work under them. Yes, TECHNICALLY Sarah Zachary is "an adult", But only technically. But Sousa didn't hire her. Instead, he reached out to Seth Kenney to recommend a prop master. The prop mater becomes the supervisor of the armorer. So, Seth Kenney recommended Sarah as prop master and Hannah as armorer. Ultimately, the LINE producer is the HR department on a movie set. Not Alec Baldwin. The Line Producer. She testified that she did have concerns about the age of the prop master and armorer, she voiced those concerns, but ultimately as long as the background check and reference checks come back clean she is not able to go back and say "I refuse to hire these people based on their age". That is age discrimination.

Did she actually say that? Because I don’t think it is. Employers can discriminate all day long against young people. They can’t discriminate against people over 40. The purpose of the age discrimination law is to protect older employees from being shitcanned and replaced with a younger, cheaper, alternative.

Caveat: I’m not licensed in New Mexico. But from what I’ve read, I think the NM law mirrors the federal ADEA in practice, even though the NM law doesn’t specify an age.

[bob]

Is this dismissal based exclusively on the judge not tolerating prosecutorial misconduct ("you cheated! you're out of the game!") or is it more complex and nuanced than that? Does serious prosecutorial misconduct always lead to a dismissal with prejudice, which clearly would be a deterrent to trying to game the system as there would be no second chance if caught out?

Prosecutorial misconduct is based in due process, i.e., the process due to each criminal defendant includes an ethical prosecutor.

Mid-trial prosecutorial misconduct can be remedied in a variety of ways, including exclusion of the evidence and a judge's instruction on the evidence. But sometimes a judge decides that the bell simply can't be unrung, so dismissal is the only remedy.

Appellate courts are very deferential to prosecutors (and trial courts) for appellate claims of misconduct. That is, it is difficult to convince an appellate court there was prejudicial misconduct that the trial court failed to correct. (Appellate courts typically will acknowledge the misconduct but then conclude no harm because the misconduct wasn't material.) So meaningful relief is often sought at the trial level.

And much of this is for deterrence: Misconduct without meaningful consequences only encourages more misconduct. Especially if there's a significant delay between when the misconduct occurred and is called out as misconduct.

Recall the Bundy the Elder's case was similarly tossed.

Does this mean Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the film’s armorer, might have some prospect of a successful appeal from her conviction for involuntary manslaughter? The ammunition involved was (iirc) known to her defense but they decided it was inculpatory rather than exculpatory, so of no use to them.

Not an appeal per se, but, yes, expect the armorer to initiate some post-conviction litigation over this issue.

Because Brady claims almost by definition are about evidence not in the record, an appeal isn't the best method to raise these claims as appeals focus on the evidence in the record. (Here, some of this evidence is not in the record of the armorer's case.)

Whether the suppressed evidence was inculpatory or exculpatory to the armorer ultimately may go to whether she's entitled to relief. But it is possible for court to look primarily at the prosecutor's conduct, and not necessarily the potential harm caused.

[RVInit]

In this case there were multiple Brady issues brought up, I can't remember how many, but the defense tried to get the case dismissed multiple times prior to this one. The last one was right before trial. The judge even asked the defense if they wanted a continuance. They conferred with the prosecution and decided that since the prosecution was going to bring a certain witness at the end of their case that would give the defense enough time to deal with the problems caused by the late discovery.

I think the judge was plain old fed up yesterday. At first when the prosecutor said she was going to get on the stand, the judge said "You better believe you are going to testify". Then, after the last witness, the judge advised Morrissey that she no longer needed for her to testify and warned her against testifying I believe this was due to the previous witness admitting that she and Morrissey together decided to put a different case number on the evidence. I think the judge knew Morrissey would get on the stand and perjure herself. Which is exactly what she did. I believe that is why the judge tried to tell Morrissey she should not get on the stand, tried to prevent that from happening. Once she heard from other witnesses and found out Morrissey herself was present at the meeting and decision making to hide that evidence, the judge's mind was made up, this was deliberate and wilfull hiding of evidence. Morrissey fucked herself by testifying for sure.

in the end, the judge mentioned "sanctions" were possible. Morrissey perjured herself at least twice that I could see, and possibly more than that. First, she said it was the Sheriff detective that decided to give it a separate case number. The judge,. in her ruling, mentioned that according to the lead detective, it was also Morrissey that was involved in making that decision. Morrissey also made excuses for why multiple prosecutors (I was only aware of two) that quit the case. Morrissey said the one that quit that very afternoon quit because she was nto happy about this motion hearing being put on in public. However, that is not the reason she quit. She quit because yesterday morning one of the detectives let it slip that there was this hidden evidence. Ooops. During lunch, the prosecutors had a meeting about what was going to happen during the hearing. The one that quit said "we need to drop this case". She understood fully the meaning of that evidence and also that this was at LEAST the third instance of the prosecution violating Brady. At least the third, maybe the fourth. Anyway, she approached the judge and told the judge she needed to withdraw due to ethical concerns.

And here's the kicker. This isn't even what STARTED the ball rolling on Morrissey's downfall. Everyone is talking so much about this Brady thing, they are forgetting to mention the issue the defense THOUGHT was going to be the drama of the day.

First thing yesterday morning, the defense brought up that they had been shown video from the day before where Morrissey was giving hand signals to the detective on the witness stand. She was alternately having that witness say "I don't recall" or "I don't deny". "I don't deny" was in order to save the embarrassment of showing the detectives mistakes and biases throughout the investigation without allowing the defense an opportunity to pull up body camera video to show the jury how Seth Kenney was directing the search of his property and other ridiculous things the investigators did. By saying she didn't deny, the prosecution would object to any video being shown because the witness wasn't denying anything. "I don't remember" could be used when there was no actual video that would be shown. I remember watching that and realizing Morrissey was doing this, and wondered if anyone would alert the defense. And the judge apparently already had been alerted about that and said as much! But when the most recent Brady violation came to light, the issue of Morrissey giving signals to the witness was dropped and the defense and judge never said any more about it.

Morrissey is likely in trouble, I do not believe any of this will be swept under the carpet.

[realist]

For which the prosecutors wanted to blame Baldwin.

Body language report: Watched the 7 minute or so video of the judge giving her ruling. The camera was on the prosecutor, Kari Morrissey, occasionally. She was on the hot seat, obviously, so it was interesting to see how she took it. What I saw was a smorgasbord of wounded dignity, arrogance, and guilt. It was kind of spellbinding.

It's interesting because Kari (yes, I know her and also know the judge, though I've not interacted with either in a while) is an excellent criminal defense and civil rights attorney. If something like this had happened when she was on the other side she'd be screaming from the rooftops to dismess the case against her client .

[realist]

Morrissey is likely in trouble, I do not believe any of this will be swept under the carpet.

If shes's brought before the disciplinary board for a hearing, it's a good chance I will be proofing the reporter's transcript. I read many. One of the clients I proof for has a contract with the D Board to take and transcribe their hearings.

[RVInit]

Morrissey is likely in trouble, I do not believe any of this will be swept under the carpet.

If shes's brought before the disciplinary board for a hearing, it's a good chance I will be proofing the reporter's transcript. I read many. One of the clients I proof for has a contract with the D Board to take and transcribe their hearings.

Very interesting, you will have to keep up informed!

[RVInit]

At the beginning of this video is the discussion of Morrissey signaling witnesses. I was not entirely surprised when the judge mentioned she was already aware of this, I am certain this is what I was seeing, and not just a little bit, it seemed to carry on quite a bit. One of the witnesses in particular was not even being careful about looking over at Morrissey prior to giving any answers on any questions, that is just plain stoopid.

[realist]

Morrissey is likely in trouble, I do not believe any of this will be swept under the carpet.

If shes's brought before the disciplinary board for a hearing, it's a good chance I will be proofing the reporter's transcript. I read many. One of the clients I proof for has a contract with the D Board to take and transcribe their hearings.

Very interesting, you will have to keep up informed!

If it happens, I'll definitely do so.

[p0rtia]

For which the prosecutors wanted to blame Baldwin.

Body language report: Watched the 7 minute or so video of the judge giving her ruling. The camera was on the prosecutor, Kari Morrissey, occasionally. She was on the hot seat, obviously, so it was interesting to see how she took it. What I saw was a smorgasbord of wounded dignity, arrogance, and guilt. It was kind of spellbinding.

It's interesting because Kari (yes, I know her and also know the judge, though I've not interacted with either in a while) is an excellent criminal defense and civil rights attorney. If something like this had happened when she was on the other side she'd be screaming from the rooftops to dismess the case against her client .

Thanks for this. I'll add my additional thoughts:

1) the judge stumbled through reading her ruling, which surprised me. I don't want to gratuitously knock her, but for description I'll say that her delivery reminded me of Andrea Mitchell's. This did not fill me with confidence. Was she like this in the rest of the trial? Or in previous cases?

2) On thinking about Morrisey's reactions a bit more, what I saw was someone who knew they had done something bad, and was trying to be nonchalant about it and failing. It was a bit agonizing to watch (at least to me).

[andersweinstein]

With respect to the armorer, there has been a pending motion for immediate release filed June 27 in anticipation of a motion to grant a new trial because of prosecutorial withholding of evidence. The alleged misconduct concerns the suppression of a revised report by state firearms expert witness Lucien Haag which conceded the existence of markings on inernal parts of the gun that could be signs of modification. Motion contains the following:

Revelations at an evidentiary hearing that occurred before this Court two days ago have made clear that Hannah Gutierrez-Reed is the victim of government misconduct that deprived her of a fair and constitutionally compliant trial. That is because the State withheld bombshell exculpatory evidence that it had a constitutional obligation to disclose and that would have resulted in a fundamentally different trial and likely a different outcome. As the Court is aware from ongoing proceedings in Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s codefendant’s case, there can be no overstating the depth of the State’s dishonesty and misconduct. In short, despite having in its possession a report from its own experts stating that the firearm used on the set of the Rust film contained unexplained toolmarks on critical surfaces of the trigger and sear, which (1) likely were not “the result of the damage incurred during the FBI’s impact testing,” and (2) “do not appear to be original manufacturing marks or use and abuse toolmarks based on [their] irregular orientation,” the State buried this information and never disclosed it to Ms. Gutierrez-Reed. But not only that: the State then called the expert at trial and sat idly by as he perjured himself during cross-examination. In doing so, the State (1) suppressed exculpatory material in violation of the U.S. and New Mexico Constitutions; (2) suppressed a testifying witness’s written statements in violation of Rule 5– 501(A)(5) NMRA; and (3) committed additional violations of the U.S. and New Mexico Constitutions during trial. This conduct is beneath what the Court should expect from a duly appointed officer of the State tasked with doing justice.

This all preceded the revelations in the Baldwin case. State filed an unopposed motion for extension of time to respond until July 26 because of the Baldwin trial.

[RVInit]

Haag's supplemental report was the subject of one of the previous Baldwin dismissal hearings due to the report being suppressed from Baldwin's defense as well. And it was denied. Even though the contents of the report could have been used to argue that in the fully cocked position the mechanism that keeps the gun from firing was less secure and could have slipped on it's own without Baldwin pulling the trigger more than 2.5 lbs.

This report was also the subject of a phone call Morrissey set up between herself and the two gun experts which clearly was designed to get Haag to decide he was probably wrong in his findings that were revealed in that supplemental report. Haag testified in that hearing and it was mind boggling. During that hearing he had no problem hearing Morrissey. He also had no problem hearing the defense attorney until she started asking him hard questions. It got so ridiculous that they had to stop the hearing and then continue another day so "he could hear". It was so obvious that he was clearly concerned that his answers would not be good for the prosecution and was trying to pretend not to hear at that point.

Hannah will not benefit from this. It definitely went to the fact that the gun could very well have "gone off" without Baldwin pulling the trigger. But that would have nothing to do with Hannah failing to check the round and Halls, supposed to be the double check also failing in his duty. Those two make me absolutely sick to my stomach. I do have a lot of empathy for Hannah in terms of being the subject of extreme workplace hostility. And I even had to admit that in part that could have made her so concerned as to the hostility that she was distracted from doing her job. A more mature person would have either reported the hostility to an appropriate person, the line producer, and if that didn't solve the problem, just quit. Being under extreme stress when you are responsible for guns and ammunition should not have been tolerated.

[RVInit]

The most interesting discussion by an armorer.

[RVInit]

For those who haven't watched the actual hearing, I forgot to mention the timing of Erlinda Johnson walking up to the judge to tell her that she is resigning due to ethical concerns.

During lunch the prosecution team discussed how they were going to handle the fact that the defense now knows about the hidden evidence and report and the judge seems to want a hearing. Johnson has stated that she gave the opinion during that meeting that "we need to dismiss this case". She doesn't give any more information about any specific conversation that takes place during this meeting.

After lunch as the hearing opens up Johnson can still be seen sitting at the prosecution table. She has not decided to leave at this point, because if so I believe she would have gone to the judge before the hearing started while everyone was taking bathroom breaks, etc. There was plenty of time for her to resign before the hearing started. All the lawyers were there and she could have approached prior to calling the first witness in, they were on the record with everyone there except the witness. After the first witness was questioned by Morrissey and before the defense cross exam, Johnson gets up and motions for all the lawyers to come with her to the bench. After that all the lawyers return, Johnson picks up her things and quietly walks out.

During cross exam it becomes clear to me, and I bet the judge as well, that the prosecutor has elicited false statements from the witness. It's my opinion that this was the last straw that made Johnson finally decide she's leaving. I think she knew that Morrissey is getting false information from the witness on purpose. She did not say this, she said it was for "ethical concerns" and then she also said in her opinion the case should have been dismissed even without the hearing. I believe her ethical concerns were pretty much the ethics of Morrissey that she has been seeing throughout her experience once she came on the team in April. There have been just too many violations and shenanigans by Morrissey to believe any of it was innocent. And listening and watching her explain herself is pretty much textbook how any liar spins their lies.

[andersweinstein]

Another wacky moment:

[HoperUp]

Lawsuits like these tend to bring out a lot of details and allegations, and it'll be interesting to see how it all unfolds. The dynamics between the armorer and the production team seem pretty intense from what's been reported.

[zekeb]

The prosecutor taking the stand reminded me of the Taitz era when Orly took the stand so she could cross examine herself.

[Sam the Centipede]

The prosecutor taking the stand reminded me of the Taitz era when Orly took the stand so she could cross examine herself.

Of course: Orly was a trail-blazer, a trend-setter, an educator!

[andersweinstein]

As expected, armorer's Expedited Motion for New Trial or for Dismissal for Discovery Violations.

Motion accuses Morrissey of lying to the Court under oath several times, including about the reason for assistant prosecutor's resignation and about not knowing the Teske rounds were filed under a different case number.

Reminder, Rust case filings all available on NM Courts' High Profile Cases page.

Tidbit: As I understand it, the armorer's legal name is just "Gutierrez". "Gutierrez-Reed" is a professional name, presumably used to play up her connection to step-father Thell Reed, a famous movie armorer. State documents use the former, defense's the latter.

[andersweinstein]

Interesting comment from David Lat:

While the case was ultimately dismissed because of the government’s screw-up, Baldwin’s lawyers deserve a lot of credit for the win. Most obviously, they unearthed this evidentiary issue—through their questioning of an early witness, a crime-scene technician—and pursued it to its logical end. It all culminated in a dramatic, in-court examination of the ammo, straight out of Perry Mason.

But beyond that, Team Baldwin doggedly called out the prosecution’s missteps at every turn. Last year, his legal team got the charges downgraded because Baldwin was improperly hit with a firearm enhancement based on a law that wasn’t passed until after the shooting—oops. This year, in the weeks leading up to the trial, they moved to dismiss the case based on defects in the grand jury proceedings, the legal theory of the case, and FBI testing that broke parts of the gun—double oops.

Judge Sommer rejected these arguments, and the case went to trial. But thanks to the narrative of prosecutorial bad faith that the Quinn Emanuel lawyers carefully crafted over a period of many months, I’m guessing that the judge went into trial with greater skepticism toward the government’s case. So when this problem with the ammunition evidence arose, Judge Sommer was primed to come down on the prosecution, hard—and that’s exactly what she did.

https://davidlat.substack.com/p/alec-ba ... red-fasorp

[busterbunker]

For fuck's sake. Why are you all still carrying on with this gossip? This is TMZ nonsense. Who gives a flying fuck?

You might might wanna start frying some bigger fish. Like #47 and shit. Enjoy your sports. Some of us have real lives to live.

[Foggy]

We talk about dogs and recipes, too also. We don't just do polly ticks.