Former Texas County Sheriff’s Deputy Sentenced to 30 Years in Prison for Child Sex Crimes

TULIA, Texas (KVII) — A former Texas County sheriff’s deputy has been sentenced to 30 years in the Texas Department of Corrections Institutional Division for violating Swisher County’s child sex abuse laws.

According to the office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, James Mark Bishop, 52, pleaded guilty on August 28 to two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and sexual conduct with a child. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison in the 242nd District Court.

Bishop was accused in 2018 of sexually abusing his then 12-year-old niece. Bishop, a convicted sex offender from Oklahoma, was living in Tulia, Texas and working as a truck driver while abusing his relative and soliciting child pornography.

The investigation revealed that Bishop still faced the prison sentence he had originally received in Oklahoma for knowingly downloading child pornography. This formed the basis for revoking his parole in Oklahoma.

Bishop was a deputy sheriff with the Texas County Sheriff’s Office in 2005 when he was arrested for sexual exploitation of a child. In 2007, he was convicted of five counts of knowingly downloading child pornography.

In 2011, Bishop was released from prison. He was placed on probation and then transferred to Tulia.

He was arrested in Tulia in 2020 on charges of continuous sexual assault of a child and indecency with a child through sexual contact in connection with incidents involving a 12-year-old girl.

After spending several months as a fugitive on the Texas Most Wanted list, Bishop was arrested in Oregon by the U.S. Marshals Task Force. In 2022, he was returned to Texas through a joint effort between federal law enforcement and the Texas Attorney General’s Office.

Bishop’s parole was revoked in Oklahoma, where he was sentenced to 33 years in prison. In addition, Bishop was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for failing to register as a sex offender at the end of 2022.

The Tulia Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Tulia police investigated the case.