Rosie Speedlin Gonzalez, who has presided over Bexar County’s Court at Law No. 13, appeared Friday in the county’s 379th Criminal District Court after being indicted on charges tied to a December 2024 courtroom incident in which she is accused of having an attorney handcuffed and kept in the jury box.
Bexar County court records show Speedlin Gonzalez, 61, has been charged with unlawful restraint by a judicial officer, a felony, and official oppression, a misdemeanor. She turned herself in Jan. 29 after the indictment, and the State Commission on Judicial Conduct later suspended her without pay.
The Friday hearing moved ahead in a case that has already upended one of the county’s better-known misdemeanor courts. Judge Ron Rangel recused himself, and the case was assigned to retired Judge Oscar Hale Jr., who spent nearly two decades as a district judge in Laredo before leaving that post in December 2024. On Friday, Speedlin Gonzalez’s attorney, the special prosecutor and Hale discussed a matter within Hale’s chambers.
The charges stem from an incident that first became public on Jan. 14, when KSAT Investigates reported on what happened in her courtroom the previous month. The State Commission on Judicial Conduct’s suspension order says Speedlin Gonzalez will remain off the bench until the charges are dismissed, she is acquitted of all charges or the commission issues another order. In March, she lost her reelection bid in the Democratic primary to Alicia Perez.
Her next court date is in June, and the case now stretches beyond the bench itself to the Reflejo Court program housed in Court at Law No. 13, a trauma-informed treatment program for first-time domestic violence offenders. For Speedlin Gonzalez, the question is no longer whether the accusation will fade with the news cycle; it is whether she can clear the felony charge that has already removed her from the courtroom she once controlled.
