Skakel lawyer leaves NY prison for halfway house

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — An attorney who represented Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel in his murder trial has been released from a New York prison after serving about six months for failing to pay more than $400,000 income taxes.

William Dow III says client Michael “Mickey” Sherman was released last week from a federal prison in Otisville, N.Y., and sent to a halfway house in Hartford, Conn., to serve the rest of his sentence.

Sherman was sentenced to a year in prison after pleading guilty to two misdemeanor counts of willful failure to pay income taxes.

Skakel is a nephew of Robert F. Kennedy’s widow, Ethel Kennedy. He was convicted in 2002 in the 1975 fatal beating of his neighbor in Greenwich when they were both 15. Skakel is serving 20 years to life.