*Updated at 9:16 p.m. on April 13, 2023: Officials at Tarrant County Jail confirmed Staley is no longer in the jail and is being transferred to the Middleton Unit in Abilene.
TARRANT COUNTY (KFDX/KJTL) — The man sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the 2018 murder of 2-year-old Jason Wilder McDaniel is no longer behind bars, according to the jail roster at the Tarrant County Corrections Center.
James Irven Staley, III, 40, of Wichita Falls, no longer appears on the jail roster of the Tarrant County Corrections Center in Fort Worth. His current status reads, “Not In Jail.”
According to multiple sources, a text message was sent at 1:11 p.m. on Thursday, April 13, 2023, from the online inmate information service Vine, stating that Staley is out of custody.
Though Staley was expected to eventually be transferred to a Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison, he is not currently listed as an inmate in the TDCJ Online Database.
Our newsroom has reached out to multiple sources for details on Staley’s status, including the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office and local officials. It is unclear at this time what lead to Staley’s release from the Tarrant County Corrections Center.
No further details are available at this time.
Staley was found guilty by a jury in Tarrant County for capital murder on Monday, March 13, 2023, and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder of Wilder McDaniel.
In an interview with Digital Reporter Josh Hoggard following Staley’s capital murder conviction, Wichita County District Attorney John Gillespie said Staley was declared “too poor to employ counsel” at a hearing held in Fort Worth on March 15, 2023.
“They brought him down yesterday in a paper gown because he’s suicidal, so he can’t have normal clothing on,” Gillespie said. “He wept through the entire proceedings. He grabbed his lawyers, crying, I guess for himself. I guarantee you there were no tears shed for the little boy that he murdered.”
This is a breaking news story. Our newsroom is working to gather more information. Stick with Texoma’s Homepage for updates as they become available.
