SAN ANTONIO – The San Antonio defense attorney, whose 2025 criminal complaint against Rosie Speedlin Gonzalez led to the judge being indicted and later accepting a lifetime ban from the bench, is speaking publicly about the incident for the first time.
Attorney Elizabeth Russell said she did not take her decision lightly to go to law enforcement after Speedlin Gonzalez ordered her to be handcuffed and placed in a jury box during a courtroom dispute in December 2024.
KSAT Investigates first exposed the altercation in January, weeks before Speedlin Gonzalez was indicted on felony and misdemeanor charges.
Russell walked into hearing ‘on pins and needles’
Russell told KSAT she had been pushing to have her client’s motion to revoke probation hearing take place before Christmas. She thought it would increase the chances of the client being released from jail before the courthouse’s holiday break.
That, combined with what Russell described as multiple incidents of Speedlin Gonzalez threatening to hold her in contempt of court during previous trials in Bexar County Court-at-Law 13, caused Russell to walk into the hearing “on pins and needles.”
“I kind of had this feeling that she was already upset,” Russell said.
Within minutes of the December 17, 2024 hearing starting, Russell’s client incorrectly pleaded true to one of the allegations.
As Speedlin Gonzalez noted the plea, Russell attempted to interject that her client misspoke, according to the court transcript.
Speedlin Gonzalez then accused Russell of coaching her client.
“Judges give grace in order for people to correct themselves because it’s very important that we get what’s accurate on the record. That’s the whole point of it,” Russell told KSAT Investigates. “At the end of the day, my client — who had a below level IQ — said the wrong thing. It’s something that we see multiple times a day in that courthouse.”
After Speedlin Gonzalez again said Russell’s client pleaded true, Russell again attempted to interject.
“You either will hold your tongue and act professionally, or I’m going to hold you in contempt,” Speedlin Gonzalez told Russell, according to the transcript.
The judge then ordered a deputy to have Russell handcuffed and moved to the jury box.
“To me, it was the fact that she hadn’t held me in contempt,” Russell said. “It was the fact that I didn’t have a hearing.”
Russell told KSAT she obtained a copy of the court transcript in January 2025. After reviewing it, she reported Speedlin Gonzalez to law enforcement.
The case was eventually investigated by the Texas Rangers, records show.
Speedlin Gonzalez’s court reporter, Olga Gutierrez, recorded audio of the hearing but later deleted the file, according to a sworn statement given by Gutierrez to the Texas Rangers last December.
Gutierrez told the Rangers it was customary in her profession to delete these types of files.
Gutierrez referred questions from KSAT about the audio file to Bexar County court administration, which referred KSAT back to Gutierrez because she “is the only person who can answer your query since she is the one with first-hand knowledge of any audio recordings used to prepare her transcript.”
Speedlin Gonzalez was indicted by a grand jury in January on charges of unlawful restraint by a judicial officer, a felony, and misdemeanor official oppression, indictment records show.
She was then suspended without pay days later by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct (SCJC).
During a gathering of local Democratic Party candidates ahead of the March 3 primary, Speedlin Gonzalez addressed the criminal case at length.
Footage of Speedlin Gonzalez’s remarks was recorded by a supporter and then posted to social media. The lengthy clip was later deleted. KSAT Investigates, however, had already obtained a copy of it.
Speedlin Gonzalez described her legal woes as being driven by discrimination:
“I’m going to tell you this: when they come for me, they come for every woman in the room. When they come for me, they come for every Latina in the room. When they come for me, they come for every first-generation child of an immigrant because that’s what I am. When they come for me, they come for every bilingual person in the room. I didn’t speak English until I was three-and-a-half, four years old. My first language is Spanish. When they come for me, they come for everybody here that’s from South Texas that has made their way in the world and is now having a stable, successful life. When they come for me, they come for every LGBT person in the room. So, if you think you’re immune, it won’t take long. Because, if they take me down, it’s a domino effect."
Rosie Speedlin Gonzalez speaking to supporters ahead of March 3 primary
Russell pushed back on Speedlin Gonzalez’s comments.
“She put me in handcuffs,” Russell said. “It was her actions that caused me to file the complaint. Not because of any other reason other than her ordering a deputy to place me in handcuffs, after all I was doing was making sure my client’s rights weren’t trampled on.”
Speedlin Gonzalez lost her March primary to attorney Alicia Perez by 30 points and then made a brief court appearance in the criminal case the following month.
Less than two weeks later, she resigned in lieu of disciplinary action as part of an agreement with the SCJC that also prohibits her from ever serving as a judge in Texas again.
The special prosecutor assigned to the case said he then made the decision to dismiss the criminal charges after speaking with Russell.
“I’m a defense attorney at the end of the day, right? So, I don’t ever really want to see people get the max amount of judgment. I just want there to be justice and I do think there was justice,” said Russell. “Ultimately, I didn’t want her to do this to any other attorneys or to any other defendants. And she can’t do that. And she can’t treat people the way that she had treated people leading up to that point.”
The SCJC also received three separate complaints this year accusing Speedlin Gonzalez of abusing her authority by issuing a no-contact order via email.
The order barred her staff from communicating with former employees of the court.
The trio of complaints were set aside as part of the April resignation agreement, records show.
Speedlin Gonzalez did not respond to a request for an interview for this story.
Reached for comment, Speedlin Gonzalez’s defense attorney told KSAT via email: “Rosie Speedlin-Gonzalez has no interest in giving you an interview, Mr. Collier.”
Read more reporting on the KSAT Investigates page.