Holihan sworn in as DA
Lehigh County’s new district attorney says he has respect for past and eye on the future as he weighs in on nonviolent offenses and those with mental health issues
Lehigh County’s first new district attorney in 26 years took the oath of office Tuesday and afterward offered up a few doses of deadpan wit as he looked forward to what’s next.
In response to a question on bail reform, for instance, Gavin Holihan said: “I’d like to bail out of this interview.” To a reporter who asked about the differences between working as a prosecutor and as a defense attorney — Holihan has been both — he explained that defense attorneys defend people and prosecutors prosecute them.
The new DA followed these poker-faced quips with a serious answers to both questions. He acknowledged the bail system, which keeps some people in jail for relatively minor offenses because they can’t afford even nominal bail, needs repair. It’s a more complex system than most people know, he added, so it won’t be an easy fix.
He said he expects his experience on both sides of the courtroom — as both ally and adversary to his predecessor, Jim Martin — to serve him well.
“I can see both sides of a situation,” he said. “I can anticipate what a good defense attorney can do and what a good prosecutor can do.”
Holihan’s swearing-in took place in a spacious secondfloor courtroom filled with other officials who were taking oaths — among them all of Holihan’s assistant DAs and county detectives — along with family members, friends, and various government and law enforcement officials.
Before administering the oath, senior Judge Carol McGinley praised Martin, whose quarter century in office was the longest tenure of any district attorney in county history.
Shortly before announcing his retirement last January, Martin hired Holihan as his first assistant. Holihan quickly announced his candidacy to succeed Martin, who
endorsed him, and ended up running unopposed.
Martin “is leaving the office in good hands,” McGinley said. “I knew [Holihan] as a young lawyer and was astonished even then at his self-confidence and integrity.”
The phrase “self-confidence” drew a laugh from the crowd, suggesting the judge had deployed a euphemism to describe the nature of Holihan’s youthful competitiveness.
Holihan served as an assistant district attorney under former DA Robert Steinberg for five years in the 1990s before embarking on a lengthy and successful career as a defense attorney.
He assumes office as the county’s largest jurisdiction, Allentown, remains mired in street violence. There were 18 homicides in the city in 2023, the most recent Friday night when a 44-year-old woman and 1-year-old boy were shot to death in a home on the 100 block of Chestnut Street.
It was part of a frightening weekend that included two other shootings in which six people were injured.
“Obviously prosecutors alone can’t solve violent crime,” Holihan said. He nonetheless vowed to take a “harsher approach” in dealing with suspects who have histories of criminal violence.
He said he’d like to see less time, money and energy expended on minor, nonviolent offenses that tend to clog the court system. Jurisdictions across the country struggle with the same thing. Some have tried to alleviate the pressure by decriminalizing low-level drug crimes, such as the possession of small amounts of marijuana.
Holihan said he doesn’t like the selective enforcement approach in which one community enforces such laws and another doesn’t, preferring to see a statewide standard.
“I’d like to see the Legislature tackle those things,” he said.
One of the key achievements of Martin’s tenure was the creation of the Regional Intelligence and Investigation Center, known as the RIIC, which is now named in his honor. The data clearinghouse allows investigators to identify connections between people, places and vehicles across jurisdictions and has helped crack cases of homicide, arson, theft and human trafficking.
“It’s an incredibly valuable resource,” Holihan said. “We’d love to expand the RIIC. It benefits law enforcement immensely.”
The new DA also wants to take a closer look at other programs to determine how successful they have been. Team MISA, for example — it stands for “mental illness, substance abuse” — helps people with mental health and addiction challenges who enter the justice system, offering programs that may divert them from court and incarceration.
Holihan said MISA has been “anecdotally successful” but he wants to know more about how participants fare in the long term, in particular how many go on to commit crimes again. He wants to apply such “metrics for success” elsewhere, and to expand the office’s relationships with community groups and other organizations that fight the root causes of crime.
Outside the courtroom, Holihan taught in the Allentown Police Academy for over a decade and has served on the Criminal Justice Act Felony Panel for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania since 2002.
He is an alumnus of Franklin and Marshall College and completed law school at Fordham University School of Law.