Attorney General Anne Milgram released the state's uniform crime report for 2008 today. It shows a 1 percent drop in murders and all violent crime and a 3 percent increase in nonviolent crime.
The accompanying news release also contains this info about murders between January and June 2009:
"The drop in the number of murders continued through the first half of this year, according to statistics compiled by the state’s 21 county prosecutors. There were 158 reported homicides in the state in the first six months of 2009, compared to 209 during the same period of 2008, which represented a 24 percent drop."