An Ector County jury has found James Earl “Boobie” Miles Jr. of Friday Night Lights fame guilty of failure to comply with sex offender registration requirements and it sentenced him to 13 years in prison.
The jury rendered its verdicts Monday. The conclusion of the trial had to be postponed two weeks because of an ill witness.
Miles, 53, was indicted in July 2022 after authorities alleged he failed to update his sex offender registration in January 2022.
According to court records, Miles was sentenced to five years in prison in January 2020 after pleading guilty to aggravated sexual assault. Miles had been indicted in August 2015 in connection with a June 1999 assault.
One of the terms of his plea agreement was that he had to register as a sex offender upon his release.
Miles was prominently featured in Buzz Bissinger’s book about the Panthers’ 1988 season, a book that made the New York Times’ best-seller list and was later made into a movie. Miles played at Ranger College the following year.
Miles is now awaiting trial on two family violence charges. He was indicted in March after his former wife was found passed out in her car with strangulation marks around her neck and an injured face.
According to an Odessa Police Department report, dispatchers received a 911 call about a disturbance in the 300 block of Dobbs Avenue and Miles’ former wife told dispatchers her husband was choking her before the line was disconnected. No one answered when the dispatchers called back multiple times.
When officers arrived, they found a Chrysler 300 parked halfway out into the street and Miles’ former wife unconscious and slumped over toward the passenger seat, the report stated.
After the officer knocked on the windows of the locked car repeatedly, the woman came around and unlocked the door.
According to the report, Miles’ former wife had bloodshot watery eyes, redness around her neck, bleeding cuts on her right hand and facial injuries. The officer noted in his report the woman was having a hard time breathing and struggled to speak through her pain.
After being taken to Odessa Regional Medical Center, she said she’d been in Odessa for a few days working on her relationship with Miles, but they began to argue because she wanted to stay one more night, the report stated.
She told officers he threw her onto the bed and choked her to the point where she was losing her vision, her ability to breathe and her consciousness. When he released her, she said she began to pray out loud which prompted him to hit her in the face, the report stated.
She remembered being dizzy, starting her car, hitting the curb and being awakened by an officer, the report stated.
According to the report, Miles initially refused to answer the door or come out of the house, but eventually came to the door when extra officers arrived and began using a public address system.
“James was very angry, verbally argumentative and refused officers’ commands to exit the residence and come out to us,” the report stated.
When Miles did eventually come outside, he refused to approach the officers, stating he wasn’t going to be arrested and he wasn’t going to go to jail, the report stated.
When negotiations failed, they sent in a canine officer who bit Miles and Miles was taken to Medical Center Hospital, according to the report.
While at the hospital, Miles “was very belligerent and making racist type statements toward officers,” the report stated.
After officers smelled marijuana on Miles and Miles’ former wife told them he was selling cocaine and marijuana, officers obtained a search warrant for the house.
Officers found 7.42 ounces of marijuana in 18 individually-wrapped packages Miles said he uses for his knees, the report stated. They also found a gun cleaning kit and bullets for a .38 special.
Officers ran a criminal history check on Miles and discovered his former wife had a valid protective order against him. They also learned he has 16 prior arrests and eight convictions for such things as aggravated sexual assault, domestic violence, criminal mischief, interfering with an emergency request for assistance and marijuana possession, the report stated.
