Inmate Completes Life Sentence

A 72-year-old-inmate of the Department of Corrections died Saturday in the infirmary of the Wyoming Medium Correctional Institution, after a lengthy illness.

Died in the infirmary:

"His name was Jason Paul Starr. He was an older gentleman and he'd been incarcerated for a number of years and he had been housed at the prison in Torrington. And had suffered from kind of a lengthy illness and was in the infirmary, had been in there for a length of time and just passed away on Saturday, December 4th."

Mark Horan, public information officer in the policy and planning department, says that an autopsy has been ordered for Starr, as the Department of Corrections does for every inmate death.

Horan says that Starr has been incarcerated since his 1985, first-degree murder conviction out of Uinta County. Starr was sentence to life in prison.

Life sentence completed:

"Particularly for people serving life sentences, I mean that goes with the territory that they will, at some point, pass away under our custody. It's unfortunate, but we certainly don't have any reason to believe there was anything unusual with this inmate."

According to a Corrections Department release, Starr was first given the name Emory Gene Reed, but changed his name to Jason Paul Starr about 40 years ago.