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>> Hello, my name is Max Welco.

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I'm am an assistant district
attorney in Allegheny County,

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and what goes into that is there are

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about 113 assistant district
attorneys in Allegheny County.

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We are kind of the highest level
of criminal law in the County.

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We're in charge of prosecuting
criminals in Allegheny County,

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and there are different phases to that.

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Right now, I am doing all
the preliminary hearings.

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It's the initial criminal phase.

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If someone is charged with a crime,
I'm basically the guy shortly

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after that crime is charged, I'm in the
courtroom trying to convince the magistrate

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that this guy did what we're claiming he did.

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So there are lots of different levels,
and we kind of cycle through that.

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So I'm a criminal prosecutor.

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Everyday, we have two sessions.

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We have a morning session and an
afternoon session, and in every session,

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there's probably about 50 or 60 files, and
each one of those files represents a crime,

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somebody did something like a DUI or an
aggravated assault or something minor,

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like a simple assault, like a bar
fight, or something very intense.

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So we figure out the direction
of that file everyday.

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So for every one of those files, either
it gets postponed for some reason,

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the defendant is unavailable, were
victims or witnesses are unavailable,

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or an officer is sick or
on comp for some reason.

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So we'll move it to a new date.

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Or the criminal defendant has the
right to waive his preliminary hearing.

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So if you're charged with a crime, it comes
up to the prelim, you can say, "You know,

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I think the Commonwealth, the State here, has
enough evidence to get past this low-level,

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evidentiary hearing, and we're
just going to move it on forward.

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We also take certain crimes that, you know,
as a policy measure, we've decided, you know,

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this isn't the crime of the century.

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We can reduce this in such a way that we can
just get this out of the pipeline right now,

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but it's always moving, and, you know, we
do that for all the cases in the morning,

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and we do that, again, for all the cases
in the afternoon, and it's just insane.

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It's loud.

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It's crazy.

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People are yelling.

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You have defense attorneys on one side wanting
us to do something, or have it go their way, or,

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you know, we have police
officers on the other side.

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We work directly with the police, you
know, giving us input on the cases.

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So we're constantly having to listen to lots
of different people, gather all the information

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to make the best decision that
we can for that specific file.