Mar. 24—Defense and prosecution lawyers in the Rust shooting case will clash in court Monday over whether District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies can appoint another special prosecutor to assist her in the prosecution of Hannah Gutierrez-Reed and actor Alec Baldwin.

Andrea Reeb, who as well as being a retired prosecutor is a Republican state House member from Clovis, stepped down from the high-profile case after defense counsel for Baldwin filed a motion to have her disqualified — arguing it violated constitutional separation of powers to have the same person serve as both a prosecutor and a state lawmaker.

Now, Carmack-Altwies wants to replace Reeb with someone else, according to a court brief filed Friday.

"The legislative intent and caselaw is clear: the District Attorney is permitted to appoint a special prosecutor for 'other good cause,' including when budgetary factors and caseloads justify doing so. ... Entry of an order denying the special prosecutor ability to co-counsel with the District Attorney would impermissibly infringe on the special prosecutor's prosecutorial authority and would unduly prejudice the state's prosecution of these crimes," Carmak-Altwies' brief stated.

Baldwin and Gutierrez-Reed, who was an armorer during the ill-fated production of Rust, are being charged with involuntary manslaughter. Baldwin was holding the gun that discharged and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in October 2021.

Gutierrez-Reed's lawyers also filed a brief Friday in preparation for Monday's hearing, arguing Carmack-Altwies does not have the authority to prosecute the Rust case while also appointing a special prosecutor.

"The special prosecutor statute is triggered only when the district attorney cannot act in the case ... The request to co-counsel undermines the statutory basis for the appointment," the defense brief argues.

Later in the brief, the defendant's lawyers added: "The Court should therefore deny the state's request to appoint a special prosecutor or, at a minimum, prohibit the district attorney or anyone from her office from serving as co-counsel with a special prosecutor."

Reeb told The New Mexican she stepped down not out of fear of losing the argument in court but because she did not want to be a distraction to the case.

"What if we did the whole trial, and we won the trial, and then the Court of Appeals found a different, you know — found something different [about my eligibility], and then the whole case would be reversed, and that's just a waste of taxpayer's money," she said after she stepped down earlier this month. "It's a waste of a lot of resources when it's very simple for me to just step off of it and do what's best for the case."

Still, Reeb's stepping down is the second high-profile setback for the prosecution in a case which has garnered international attention due to Baldwin's celebrity. Prosecutors had originally sought to charge Baldwin and Gutierrez-Reed with a firearm enhancement that would have boosted their maximum sentence if convicted from 18 months to six-and-a-half years, only to drop it in the face of a defense motion arguing it was inapplicable because the law didn't take effect until after the Rust shooting took place.

The hearing will be held virtually at 10 a.m. It will be live-streamed on the New Mexico Courts YouTube Channel.