With homicides in Philadelphia on track to eclipse last year’s record-setting 562 murders according to AXIOS,  District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office is working to reduce sentences for convicted murderers.  The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that last week a federal judge rejected Krasner’s effort to reduce the death sentence of a 1984 double-murderer, in a decision highlighting the fact that his office had attempted to mislead the court.  Shortly after the former criminal defense attorney’s election as district attorney in 2018, Krasner fired 31 deputies, including a dozen experienced homicide prosecutors.  Since then. his office has partnered with defense attorneys to petition Philadelphia judges to resentence condemned murderers to life in prison without parole.  Earlier this year the DA joined the defense attorney for Robert Wharton, who murdered a young couple in 1984, to petition Federal District Judge Mitchell Goldberg to overturn his death sentence on a claim of ineffective assistance of council at the sentencing hearing.

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The U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California (LA and adjoining counties) issued this press release last Wednesday:

Federal prosecutors today filed criminal charges against nine defendants – seven of them dockworkers at the Port of Long Beach – who allowed more than $2.1 million in fraudulent claims to be submitted to their labor union’s health insurance plan for sexual services or for physical therapy that never was provided. Continue reading . . .

Last week California Attorney General Rob Bonta released state crime data for 2021.   In a statement to the press, Bonta noted that  violent and property crime rates “remain significantly below their historical highs,” then admitted that homicides increased 7% last year. This follows a 31% increase in homicides from 2019 to 2021. The largest single-year increase in state history.

Taking the Attorney General at his word that “Good data is a cornerstone of good public policy,” the latest Crime in California report strongly suggests that current policies are taking the state in the wrong direction.

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Oklahoma executed convicted murderer James Coddington this morning by lethal injection.  Stephanie Pagones of Fox News reports that Governor Kevin Stitt declined to commute Conddington’s death sentence yesterday, despite the murderer’s apology and the state parole board’s recommendation that his sentence be reduced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.  A 2006 decision by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals describes how Coddington beat his friend, 73-year-old Albert Hale to death with a claw hammer and robbed him of $525 in order to buy cocaine.  Hale’s son found his body later that day and rushed him to the hospital, where he died from his injuries.  After murdering Hale, Coddington went on to commit least six armed robberies of gas stations and convenience stores across Oklahoma City.   Following his arrest, he admitted to the robberies and the murder.  His execution was the fifth Oklahoma has carried out since the state resumed enforcing the death penalty last year.