William Platt held many public titles in Lehigh County and beyond over the past few decades, including district attorney, county judge and Pennsylvania Superior Court judge. Along the way, he inspired many others to follow similar paths of public service.
“Nobody did it better at any level of his career,” his son, William Platt II said. “He was the best.”
Platt, of Emmaus, died Tuesday at 85.
Family and former colleagues fondly remembered the elder Platt, described as a sensitive, soft-spoken and humble man who had a deep love of his family and friends.
“He was a gentleman in all respects,” said former Lehigh County DA Jim Martin, who worked with Platt in the district attorney’s and public defender’s offices, and was the DA a few years after him.
William Platt knew he wanted to be a lawyer when he was in sixth grade, his wife Maureen Platt said. He graduated from Emmaus High School, then went to Dickinson College before getting his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He spent about 18 months as a military policeman in Panama during the Vietnam War before returning to Lehigh County.
In 1966, he entered private practice while he worked in the public defender’s office part time, reaching the title of chief public defender. In 1976, then-DA George Joseph died in office. The Lehigh County Court of Common Pleas appointed Platt, then 36, to the role, where he served until 1991, when he resigned to work in private practice.
A few years later, Platt ran for judge of the Court of Common Pleas, where he served until 2010. After that, he was appointed to the Pennsylvania Superior Court, where he served for another few years before retiring.
In all but one of his elections he ran unopposed, which friends and family attributed to how well-liked and respected he was in the community.
During his time as district attorney, many of his former colleagues at the public defender’s office, including Martin, Common Pleas Judge Robert Steinberg and retired U.S. Magistrate Judge Henry Picken, joined him. Many of those who worked under him went on to be judges or in two cases, the next DA.
“I think that’s a pretty profound statistic,” William Platt II said.
Martin, Steinberg and Perkin all said their friend and former boss, who had an “encyclopedic knowledge of the law,” taught them how to try criminal cases.
Retired Lehigh County and Pennsylvania Superior Court Judge William H. Platt, seen here at a press conference in 1979, died Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025, at the age of 85. (Burt Swayze/The Morning Call)
“He had a great influence on me and many others in terms of how we practice law,” Martin said.
Perkin said Platt represented criminal defendants as a public defender and prosecuted them as DA “vigorously and brilliantly.”
“I give Bill an awful lot of credit for any successes that I may have had,” Perkin said.
Steinberg, who was DA right after Platt resigned, said Platt gave him his first job at the public defender’s office, and hired him again at the DA’s office a few years after his appointment there. Steinberg affectionally called him “boss,” years after they stopped working together.
“I wouldn’t be where I am today without his guidance and friendship,” he said.
Platt was known for his strong sense of morality and ethics, family and friends said.
Martin recalled a case in which the two of them, as public defenders, represented three of five people charged with murder. The other two suspects had not been arrested by the time trial started.
Some time later, after the trial had ended and Platt and Martin had moved to the DA’s office, the final two people were arrested. Platt made sure a different prosecutor handled that case, and that he and Martin would have no discussion with them.
Maureen Platt said her husband liked how varied the DA job was. He wanted to give it a shot once he was offered the position.
“He just thought it was wonderful,” she said. “It was his favorite position.”
He always had his beeper on him while he was the DA, and he would run out to any major incident where he was needed.
“If the beeper went off, then that’s where he was headed,” his wife said.
Pennsylvania Superior Court Judge Honorable William H. Platt in a photo taken in 2013. Platt died Tuesday at age 85. (EMILY ROBSON / THE MORNING CALL )
One of the more notable cases during his time as DA was when his office seized a plane at the Lehigh Valley International Airport that had 1.5 tons of cocaine in it. His office also seized Shorty’s Cafe in Allentown, a restaurant that authorities said was home to a lot of drug activity over the years.
His time as the DA inspired his son, William Platt II, to pursue a legal career. His dad’s career, he said, was the ideal one. He was respected by so many people and was great at his job, he said. The elder Platt, a soft-spoken man, would often shock people while he tried cases, during which he would be a “litigation genius,” his son said.
“As a kid I always thought he was the best lawyer,” William Platt II said.
At the time that Platt resigned in 1991 to enter private practice, he was the longest-tenured DA in Lehigh County. Martin would later beat that record at 25 years.
Fueled by a strong desire for public service, he ran for judge in the Court of Common Pleas in 1995, a position he would hold until 2010, when he turned 70. Martin described him as an admirable judge, who would not insert himself into the presentation of evidence during a trial.
“He was a judge who let the lawyers try the case,” he said.
Perkin said William Platt would always treat people in the court politely, and he never yelled at anyone.
“He always had complete control of his courtroom,” he said.
Maureen Platt recalled numerous instances where people came up to her husband in public, saying he sent them to prison for a crime they committed. They thanked him, and told him they turned their lives around because of it.
During his tenure as a judge, he served as the president judge of the Court of Common Pleas for two terms, which Martin said it was a testament to how he was viewed within the legal community.
“I think every judge had the ultimate respect for him, as well as the lawyers before him,” Perkin said.
During his career he also served as chairman for the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association and was on the board of directors at the Lehigh County Bar Association.
At 70, which was the then-required retirement age for judges, the state Supreme Court picked Platt to be a full-time senior judge, and he served in that role for several years. During that time, he was tasked with reviewing transcripts and writing opinions on appeals from rulings in various court cases. He at one point ruled in an appeal filed in Jerry Sandusky’s child sex abuse case.
Perkin said Platt would turn out a legal opinion five days a week, and called his work ethic “unbelievable.”
“He loved that job. He was excellent at it,” he said.
Maureen Platt said her husband loved working in the law and his job, which ultimately made him a happy man who was able to give their family a happy home.
In an interview with The Morning Call in 2010, William Platt said he was excited at the prospect of “new adventure” before he took on the Superior Court role.
“How many times can you reinvent yourself?” he asked. “It’s really wonderful.”
He was kind and respectful in all of his roles, attributes his friends and family said he exhibited outside the courthouse as well.
“If he didn’t like you, he would never be rude to you,” his son Jamie Platt said.
William Platt II remembered his dad was always at the dinner table growing up and would always be at his kids’ important events and family holidays. The elder Platt had two sons and a daughter.
“My dad never sacrificed his family for work,” William Platt II said. “But at the same time did his job at such a high level. It was remarkable.”
He loved his wife, who William Platt II said stood by his side and helped him accomplish everything he wanted to do in life.
“She was exactly the support that he needed,” he said.
William Platt liked music, Broadway shows and was an avid Phillies fan. He spent some winters going to their spring training games in Florida, and also had season tickets to their regular season games, which he would take some of his friends and family to.
He was a “rock” to so many people, his friends said. Once, he held an intervention for a colleague dealing with substance abuse issues, and it worked.
“He cared so much about his people,” Maureen Platt said.
His colleagues said they could always pick his brain about legal matters well after they stopped working together.
“He had touched so many people’s personal lives as well as professional lives,” Perkin said.
“He was everything you would want and the type of person you’d want to emulate in every way shape or form,” Steinberg said.
A memorial will be held at 4 p.m. Nov. 7 at the Historic Lehigh County Courthouse, 501 Hamilton St., Allentown.