Ex-NFL Player, Actor Charged With Violating Domestic Abuse Order

A former NFL player and actor is charged with 12 misdemeanor counts of violating a domestic abuse injunction after prosecutors say he sent numerous emails to his ex-wife in violation of a court order.

Bronzell La James Miller, 41, of West Allis, appeared in Waukesha County Circuit Court Thursday on the misdemeanor charges. He faces up to nine years in jail and $12,000 in fines if convicted of 12 misdemeanors.

Miller was drafted by the St. Louis Rams in 1995 and was moved to Jacksonville that season. He has appeared in films such as Mr. 3000 and Bringing Down the House, and TV series Touched by an Angel and Promise Land, according to IMBD.com.

Miller’s ex-wife is claiming he has contacted her many times via email in September and October, despite a no-contact order being signed by a Jefferson County judge in June.

“(The ex-wife) stated that she fears for her safety due to the fact that the defendant is an ex-NFL football player and is very large in stature,” the complaint states. “In a written statement to police, Jane explained that the defendant has a long history of physically and verbally abusing her.”

The emails were not described as threatening in nature.

Despite the Waukesha County District Attorney’s office requests to hold Miller on a significant cash bail, Court Commissioner Thomas Pieper released Miller on a signature bond. Miller said during court that he’s in Stage 3 of cancer, having been hospitalized for 10 months – or “since the Super Bowl.”

“I’m fighting paralysis right now,” Miller said. “Death is the next step.”

Miller, who didn’t have an attorney, argued in court that he was allowed to contact his ex-wife about his cancer treatments and his children. And the former defensive end says the new criminal charges are in retaliation to a lengthy citizen complaint he is filing against his wife in an attempt to bring her up on federal charges including adultery, neglect and conspiracy.

Miller filed a 74-page document in Waukesha County Circuit Court trying to charge his ex-wife with 93 criminal charges that would have a maximum sentence of 1,122 years.

“My ex-wife was conspiring … to commit a form of soft homicide by cancer/health through deprivation and I had no lawyer to help protect me from what a wife who wants to move on with me dying as a widow without the embarrassment of divorce,” Miller wrote in a document he filed in Waukesha County Circuit Court.

Waukesha Patch is unable to substantiate Miller’s claims about his former wife. Adultery hasn’t been prosecuted in Wisconsin in decades, although attempts were made to prosecute a woman in northern Wisconsin in 1990.

Miller claimed in court the only reason he’s being charged criminally is his complaint against his ex-wife. The Waukesha County District Attorney’s office “can lie,” "not tell the whole story" and describe him as a “big, scary black guy (who) is going to harm somebody,” Miller said in court.

“There was no violence,” Miller said. “There was no touching.”

However, Pieper told him that the initial appearance isn’t a jury trial. Miller returns to court at 10 a.m. Jan. 14 for a hearing on the charges.

Miller is convicted of a 2010 disorderly conduct offense. He also is on bail in Jefferson County on three counts of using a computer to threaten harm or injury.