Speaker on June 6: Ethan Holland

Ethan has been an Assistant State’s Attorney for the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office for 20 years.  Currently, Ethan is the Supervisor of the Gun Crime Strategies.  In that capacity, Ethan leads a team of Assistant State’s Attorneys and Intelligence Analysts who vertically prosecute the leading drivers of violence in the five most dangerous police districts in Chicago.  These districts include the 6th and 7th districts on the city’s south side as well as the 10th, 11th and 15th districts on the city’s west side.  The unit prosecutes all manner of felonies from gun charges to vehicular hijackings to murders.   Ethan and all of the Gun Crime Strategies Assistant State’s Attorneys are cross-designated as Special Assistant United States Attorneys for the Northern District of Illinois for a joint Federal/State violent crime task force focusing on the most violent districts in Chicago.

Previously, Ethan was a first chair lead prosecutor for ten years in the Cold Case Homicide Unit which later became the Complex Homicide and Gangs Unit of the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office.  In the Cold Case Homicide Unit, Ethan was responsible for coordinating investigations, charging, and prosecuting several high-profile cold case murders.  In his career as a prosecutor, Ethan has tried hundreds of cases including seventy-four jury trials.  Sixty-three of those juries were felony cases, twenty-five of those felony cases were murder juries.  Ethan has tried a total of thirty-three murder cases.

 

Summary of “Intelligence Driven Prosecutions:”
            Recognizing that the problem of gun violence in Chicago was rising to unprecedented levels, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office (“CCSAO”) developed a new unit to specifically address this chronic problem.  Data revealed that gun violence in Chicago is most prevalent in, although certainly not limited to, a few police districts on the south and west sides of the city.  In response, the CCSAO formed the Gun Crime Strategies Unit (“GCSU”) in an effort to address the problem of gun violence in a comprehensively different way.  By vertically prosecuting the leading drivers of violence and collaboratively working with our federal, state and local partners, the GCSU is attacking the problem of gun violence in a more focused and effective manner.