First Asst Director David Halls Tells Jury About His Negligence, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed’s “Not Acceptable” Conduct

https://deadline.com/2024/02/rust-assistant-director-david-halls-trial-testimony-1235842406/

Veteran first assistant director David Halls also admitted during his testimony this afternoon that he was “negligent” in not checking the firearm properly after armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed in the moments before the shooting.

“It’s important to me that the truth be known, that that Halyna’s husband and son, her family know the truth of what happened,” Halls told the jury in the Santa Fe courthouse as Gutierrez-Reed sat just a few feet away.

“It’s important that the cast and the crew, producers of Rust know what happened,” he added with his voice breaking frequently under questions from Special Prosecutor Kerri Morrissey. “And it’s important that that industry, the motion picture and television industry knows what happened, so this never happens again.”

Covered by a plea deal that secured him six months’ probation last year, the now-retired Halls has always said he did not know how live rounds got into the Colt .45 revolver held by Baldwin that fired during rehearsal. Contradicting various other witnesses including Alec Baldwin’s the initial statement to police in 2012, Halls today on the stand said that it was Gutierrez-Reed who gave the Rust star/producer the gun, not him.

Earlier today, seasoned film armorer Bryan W. Carpenter summed up the job on the stand with a curt: “Complacency kills.” At the same time, Carpenter inadvertently made a good case for the defense by asserting that the armorer has great powers to halt filming and instruct actors on firearm safety — which Gutierrez-Reed was not permitted to do on Rust, it appears. “Time is an exact equal to money … it’s down to seconds on a film,” he added of the rushing around that Rust and all films endure.