Bar suspends lawyer known for Katy coach case
A dynamic Houston trial attorney widely respected for her work freeing a Katy football coach from prison can’t practice law for the next three years after the State Bar of Texas suspended her license following a trio of grievances.
The complaints against Casie Gotro all centered on three similar claims that she failed to keep clients up to date on the status of their cases and never returned money once she stopped representing them. When Gotro did not respond to the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel’s questions about the complaints, the state suspended her license and fined her nearly $60,000, records show.
But even before the disciplinary sanctions issued effective in May, Gotro had already vanished from the Houston legal scene, sparking speculation and concern among the defense bar. Calls to her phone were not answered on Thursday.
“I wish I knew what happened to her,” said Kristin Guiney, a former Harris County felony court judge. “For as long as I’ve known her, Casie has been a ferocious advocate for her criminal clients and a very talented attorney.”
Gotro made a name for herself as an intense lawyer with a cynical wit and a willingness to put in long hours. In 2017, she won a mistrial for the only man tried after the
Twin Peaks sports bar shootout in Waco that left nine people dead and netted more than 170 arrests. The gunbattle stemmed from a melee involving two feuding biker clubs and responding police — and it’s still not clear who fired the fatal shots.
She also helped free football coach David Temple, after a Texas appeals court decided prosecutors had failed to turn over key evidence in a timely manner. The Katy man spent nearly a decade in prison after he was convicted of killing his pregnant wife. He was released in 2016 and this month is scheduled for retrial.
The following year, Gotro and co-counsel Clint Broden were honored by the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association as lawyers of the year.
“She worked a case harder than anybody,” said Houston attorney Mark Bennett. “She would go to the office and it would be like the conspiracy theory scenes in the movies where the person has the pictures and notes connected with red strings — and it was really like that. That’s how she prepared a case. And she would find things that nobody else found.”
But on the heels of her legal successes, Gotro began to retreat from the courthouse. That fall, she was deemed ineligible to practice in the state for failure to pay dues, according to media reports at the time.
Then in April of this year, the state bar handed down sanctions — an active suspension and two probated suspensions — along with a public reprimand. It’s not clear who filed the grievances, and the criminal defendants whose cases sparked the complaints could not be reached Thursday for comment. In addition to the suspensions and fines, the state bar also ordered that Gotro get a psychological assessment and seek treatment, if recommended.
Houston defense attorney Patrick McCann said he didn’t know any details of the complaints against Gotro, though he later handled the appeal for one of the cases in question. But said that to the state bar, Gotro’s failure to respond may have been just as damning as any mishandling of the money.
“If you do not answer a grievance,” he said, “you’re presumed guilty.”
When reached for comment Thursday, Gotro’s family said they had not heard of the grievances and did not wish to speak on the record.
Colleagues, meanwhile, described Gotro’s troubles with the bar and her retreat from the law as a sign that she’d lost faith in the system and simply did not want to be found.
“This work has a cost,” McCann said. “I think when you spend all your time trying to tilt at windmills, sometimes the windmills get you.”