OSWEGO -- Alan Jones, who was convicted of killing his stepsister Erin Maxwell, was released from state prision on Tuesday and is being moved back to Oswego County.
Oswego County Undersheriff Gene Sullivan says Jones will be housed at the county jail until his re-sentencing hearing on the lower manslaughter charge. Jones was serving 25 years to life at the Great Meadows Correctional Facility in Comstock.
The murder conviction was reduced to manslaughter by a State Appellate Division Panel in a unanimous decision earlier this month.
In the decision handed down on November 9, the panel said the November 2009 decision of Oswego County Court Judge Walter Hafner, Jr. was unanimously reduced from second degree murder to second degree manslaughter, and the sentence is to be vacated.
The 11-year-old Maxwell's death sent a shockwave through the community. Police say she was forced to live in a Palermo home full of garbage, animals and feces, and was often locked in a caged-in room. The girl's parents, Lynn and Lindsay Maxwell, were convicted of separate counts of endangering the welfare of a child and spent nearly two years in jail.
The date for the re-sentencing has not been scheduled.
