>> My name is Bill Kissner.
I am the Magisterial District Judge in Carbon County in the borough of Palmerton.
And I sit and hear all the cases in the beginning
in the system of the criminal justice system.
And what I mean by that is from traffic all the way up to a murder case.
The way the system works is if someone pleads not guilty to a case,
my staff handles all the paperwork and they set them up for summary trial.
The summary trial is usually schedule about 4 to 6 weeks out because of our schedule.
And then what happens is the day of the summary trial,
the person who is the defendant comes in, the police officer comes in.
The police officer offers testimony regarding the violation or alleged violation.
And then the ball goes over to the defendant and they're able to provide anything to the court
that they feel necessary to try and prove their case and when I mean by that is
through verbal testimony or some people actually bring in documentation
as photos of say stop sign violation.
And then they present their case and likewise the police officer's entitled
to ask them questions and then I render a verdict of guilty or not guilty.
The lowest level of a criminal case and it's called the summary offense in Pennsylvania.
Most of the time that would be a harassment charge where 2 people get in an argument
and they get cited because one may physically assault the other but not to the point
of an injury, in other words, someone smacks someone.
The higher level assaults then lead into what is considered a criminal case
which is what we're talking about on criminal day.
And those are misdemeanor and felony charges where that takes a different avenue.
I don't render a verdict on that; I determine what's called prima facie on the case.
We also, because there's only 4 of us in the county, every fourth week we are on call
And what I mean by on call is 24/7 one of us has to be available for either arraignments
of someone who's charged in the middle of the night, protection from abuse orders,
someone who violates the protection from abuse order, search warrants and various other things.
So 1 week a month is what it comes down to, we are on call 24/7 for a week.