Jurors deliberated about three hours Friday before finding a youth hockey coach guilty of sexually assaulting three young boys in Butte and Flathead County.
Jami Leslie James was found guilty on all six charges of sexual intercourse without consent and faces up to 100 years in prison on each count. He sat calmly without emotion as the verdicts were read and moments later, officers cuffed him and led him back to jail.
District Judge Robert Whelan thanked jurors for their service, ordered a presentence investigation and set a tentative sentencing date of Nov. 6.
The Butte-Silver Bow County jury of six men and six women listened to closing arguments Friday afternoon, got the case around 3:30 p.m. and reached their verdicts before 7 p.m. They were read out loud in court around 7:20 p.m.
All three boys testified at trial this week that James, now 50, sexually assaulted them when they were either 8 or 9 years old and participants in his private hockey program.
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Two of the boys were in court early Friday evening and they joined friends and family in hugging one another and Montana prosecutors Stephanie Robles and Kelli Fivey after the jury was dismissed.
“We think it’s a terrific day for justice,” Fivey told The Montana Standard. “We are thrilled that the jury thoughtfully deliberated the case and believed the victims.
“We’re super proud of these boys,” she said. “They did things that most adults couldn’t do and it’s because of their bravery that we got guilty verdicts on all six counts.”
Former youth hockey coach Jami James is handcuffed after a jury found him guilty of sexually assaulting three young boys in Butte and Flathead County, on Friday, Sept. 12, 2025, at the Butte-Silver Bow Courthouse.
During closing arguments earlier Friday, Robles said James raped the three young boys and before they came forward, “no one knew the defendant … had a dark and horrifying secret.”
“Each of these boys had to be tremendously brave and face a jury of folks they don’t know and talk about things, explain on the witness stand what happened to them,” she said.
Former youth hockey coach Jami James listens to closing arguments presented by prosecutor Stephanie Robles on Friday at the Butte-Silver Bow Courthouse.
“There’s no reason that any of them made any of this up unless it actually happened.”
James had maintained innocence from the time he was arrested in February 2023, and defense attorney Scott Hilderman told jurors Friday that he believed one boy made up allegations, a friend joined him in the story and a third boy “adopted” the same account when a “media frenzy” ensued after James was arrested.
“It’s a tragic web of false disclosures fueled by suggestions, vulnerability and outright inconsistencies, compounded by an extremely poor investigation,” Hilderman said.
Defense attorney Scott Hilderman delivers closing arguments to the jury during the trial of former youth hockey coach Jami James on Friday at the Butte-Silver Bow Courthouse.
He said police took the boys’ accusations at face value and simply turned them over to prosecutors without interviewing countless other kids or camp counselors, among other miscues.
“The law enforcement investigation was so bad you can’t even call it a pile of garbage because they did so little, there is no garbage,” he said.
James went on trial Monday for allegedly raping the three boys in Butte and Flathead County between 2019 and early 2021.
Defense attorneys Lane Bennett, left, and Scott Hilderman lean in to speak during the trial of former youth hockey coach Jami James on Friday at the Butte-Silver Bow Courthouse.
James told police he never sexually abused children and could not think of a motive behind the accusations. But he has said he is biracial and told a detective after his arrest that he feels he is constantly attacked due to his race. That claim was not raised at trial.
James was charged with six counts of sexual intercourse without consent, a crime in Montana that usually involves alleged penetration by an object or body part.
James pleaded not guilty in April 2023 to two counts filed in Butte-Silver Bow County, five days after he pleaded not guilty in Kalispell to four rape charges in Flathead County. Each count carries a maximum sentence of 100 years in prison.
Prosecutor Kelli Fivey gestures while speaking about the ages of the alleged victims while delivering closing arguments to the jury during the trial of former youth hockey coach Jami James on Friday at the Butte-Silver Bow Courthouse.
Police officers from Butte, Kalispell and the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office cooperated in the investigation. Fivey and Robles are prosecutors from the Montana Attorney General’s Office and they tried the case.
The six counts were ultimately combined into one case that was tried in Butte this week before Judge Whelan.
Two of the victims are now 13 years old and the other is 14.
All three testified this week, all describing the same kinds of alleged sexual assaults. Two said James covered their mouths with his hand when they cried, screamed or tried to scream.
Former youth hockey coach Jami James sits in trial on Friday at the Butte-Silver Bow Courthouse.
• One boy described an assault at a hotel in Butte, where a hockey camp was being held, and said the other happened at James’ house in Flathead County.
• One said James sexually assaulted him on three occasions — once at James’ house in Columbia Falls, once in a nearby house James used for hockey camp gatherings and once on a boat during a camping trip at Hungry Horse Reservoir.
• A third boy said he saw a newspaper story about James’ arrest in February 2023 and told his parents a day or two later that the same thing happened to him. They contacted police immediately.
• One boy said he told his father about an assault shortly after it happened but his father didn’t believe him. He and another alleged victim were friends and eventually told each other what happened, but police didn’t learn about the allegations until December 2022 when the boys talked to their mothers.
Those mothers testified this week and the mother and father of the third boy also took the stand. All described being shocked and saddened when their sons told them about the assaults.
Hilderman and fellow defense attorney Lane Bennett suggested throughout the trial that other boys were in the rooms or close by when the alleged assaults took place and it was implausible none of them awakened to hear or see something.
They also called two hockey camp counselors to the stand, both saying the boy who alleged being assaulted on the boat was with them and others in a tent that night and never left.
One counselor also said he stayed with other boys at James’ houses numerous times, never saw James wandering around after others were asleep and never saw James do anything inappropriate with the kids.
Both camp counselors acknowledged to prosecutors that they slept that some that night so they could not be certain the boy never left the tent.
Prosecutors called another boy to the stand Friday who was at the camp at Hungry Horse Reservoir. He said the boy in question got sick one night, asked for James, left the tent and did not return that night.
Hilderman told jurors Tuesday that James had a sexual relationship with one of the boys’ mother but ended the affair after it became public because he was married, suggesting it as motivation to make false allegations against his client.
That woman said she became close friends with James but stated adamantly this week that it never became sexual. No testimony or evidence was presented to back up Hilderman’s claims.
Mike Smith is a reporter at the Montana Standard with an emphasis on government and politics.
