Warp That Aesop / Ace Attorney

• If you're a defense lawyer, you can totally steal random crap from the scene of a crime and use it not only to prove that your client is innocent, but that the witnesses, police, or even the prosecution are guilty. Usually, no one will complain about your blatant violations of evidence law.
• It is not enough to simply prove that your client is innocent. You also have to identify the actual culprit and prove they are guilty, or else your client will be found guilty anyway.
  • Or alternatively, if you do prove your client innocent without fingering an alternative suspect, the police will just arrest the wrong person again and now you have to defend them too and find the real culprit anyway.
• There are no honest prosecutors, only people who are driven by insanity or tragic pasts to knowingly and willingly convict innocent people.
• When you have uncovered the truth about who really committed the murder your client got blamed for, the first thing you should do is run straight to that person and accuse them of murder, to their face, out of court, without alerting the police first or getting a subpoena. There will be no serious negative repercussions for waving your finger in the face of a known killer in a place where there aren't any witnesses.
  • And don't forget to wave the damning piece of evidence that proves their guilt right in their face. What are they going to do? Tase you?
• If an unknown suspect shoveled snow, that proves that the suspect is a man, because women are incapable of doing physical work like that. A shovel could have a mass of up to 3 kilograms (7 pounds); that's way too much for a woman to lift.
• Perfectionists are eeeeeeevil.
• Red-haired women are all evil. Orange doesn't count, it has to be straight-up red.
• Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney: The best kind of court system is one in the hands of a senile old judge, with the assistance of a scruffy hobo who's a proven fraud!
• Not to mention, defense attorneys are easily manipulated by their rivals and mentors, and do nothing, while the prosecutors get fangirls and rock bands. Oh, and the criminals get better jail cells than your entire office. Even the total psychos.
• Forgery, even forgery that ruins multiple people's lives, is okay so long as you're too naive to know what you're doing is wrong. If you're a broke artist, feel free to manipulate your talented, agoraphobe daughter. Don't trust the nice guy who gives you a good luck charm to help you break free of your crippling fear of outside; he's evil and has a creepy scar. Feel free to leave your seven-year-old daughter with a defense attorney you don't know and who's probably going to be out of work soon, it's not like you could trust him with the one piece of information guaranteed to get you out of this mess. Obsessing over one case for seven years is just fine, your adopted daughter can be the breadwinner. And these are all from ONE case.
• Don't trust men with pretty hands or men with ugly hands, especially not if the same guy qualifies as both depending on whether he's pushing on his glasses.
• It's okay to scream, point, hit desks, and generally be uncivilized in the court of law, it's not like anyone's going to say anything about it.
• When witnesses are called into court, it is acceptable for them to throw toupees at the defense, flirt, smoke, hand out lunch, sip green tea, hide behind cardboard boxes and robot drones, and shout into megaphones. The only things not acceptable for witnesses to do are lying and telling corny jokes.
• Evil is sexy!^note Dahlia Hawthorne, Matt Engarde, April May, Kristoph Gavin, etc.
• Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Justice For All: If you're a prosecutor, it's okay to repeatedly whip the defense, witnesses, and even Your Honor, just to establish your dominance over them and have your way. Come on! See that defense attorney who just defeated you? Whip him until you knock him out—only the defense can ever be held in contempt of court!
  • Hell, the defense already has the contempt of everybody else in the courtroom. All they need is an excuse to make it official.
• An even better thing to do is to throw coffee mugs full of coffee at the defense, because that is reasonable.
• HOLD IT! (desk slam): Only the Defense can be disbarred for presenting false evidence! If you're the Prosecutor all that matters is getting a conviction, so the ends justify the means. So go ahead and fabricate, hide or outright destroy evidence if it'll help your case. Inversely, defense attorneys can do anything it takes to win, but forged evidence is off-limits.
  • Unless it's the Dark Age of the Law, in that case defense attorneys now have a magic license to also forge evidence because people have magically stopped giving a shit.
  • Sadly there have been a lot of cases of prosecutors who actually believe this.
• Aside from cause and time of death, forensic evidence should be ignored entirely. All fingerprints are either planted or wiped. All final clues from the victims are forgeries. All items belonging to the defendant were easily stolen and used. The truth can only be reached from the initial assumption that the defendant is innocent.
• Never give anyone else a motive to kill you. They'll probably try. And in the best-case scenario, justifiable self-defense is still a crime and your life will be ruined anyway. Then again, you can always make a friend in local law enforcement to ensure that he'll show up in the nick of time to stop you from ever needing to follow through with either outcome.
• The best deposition comes from ghosts.
• If a gang member mortally wounds the son of a rival crime family, it will lead to said rival family deciding to leave crime (thus eliminating the competition) rather than seeking revenge and escalating the gang warfare. Killing rival gang leaders' family members won't put you in the rival gang's crosshairs or in prison, it will lead to peace and prosperity for your gang!
• If someone is a mob boss's son, it's safe to prosecute him, but if someone is a mob boss's granddaughter, it's not worth it to even consider prosecuting her when she's clearly an accomplice to murder.
• Perjury is, in fact, NOT a criminal offence and it's totally fine to take the witness stand again if you've been known to give fraudulent testimonies. The defense attorney asking for the testimony will take full responsibility for it anyways.
• If a teenager or young adult is kidnapped, you should immediately start to suspect that either the victim is a murderer, or the people trying to save them are protecting a murderer.
• The police are so incompetent at crime scene investigation that biased untrained lawyers and their child companions can do a better job. This is true even if they grab important evidence without worrying about whether they get their prints on it or that the culprits might steal this evidence from the unarmed "investigators."
• If the defendant is innocent, it will pretty much always be possible to get the real culprit onto the stand and have them give a confession or near-confession once enough evidence against them is gathered.
• If people a man loved were murdered, he'll become a brooding and mysterious Anti-Hero or Anti-Villain, but if a girl has someone she loves murdered, she'll be a super-energetic, bubbly companion who will receive massive compliments on how brave she is while she briefly cries, but then become a cheerful inspiration.
• If someone asks you to defend someone else they know, pay close attention to the suspect. If he or she is loudly declaring his or her guilt, then their innocence is assured and you can safely accept the case. If they say they didn't do it, though, they're guilty as hell.
• As a corollary, any public admission of guilt that isn't made on the witness stand is proof of innocence.
• Burgling the office of the chief of police and publicly admitting to it will not carry any legal consequences as long as you win with whatever you found there.
• Rape never happens, and theft is rare. Just murder.
• Everything's better with Snowclones when it comes to naming court cases.
• There is no such thing as an average attorney. Winning the seemingly unwinnable case makes you an Ace Attorney. Losing it makes you undeserving of a badge.
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies: If you or someone you know is about to be wrongfully convicted, go insane! The psychoanalysis that you will need to undergo will surely be enough to keep the defense's case alive.
• It's ok to take people hostage and threaten to kill them if you don't get a retrial for a wrongfully convicted person, as long as you're doing it out of love and you turn yourself in afterwards. The legal system is useless and can't be trusted, after all.
• If your goal in life is to save someone, to the point where you enter (or re-enter) your profession and become certified in it because of that goal... just wait around for something to happen. Something big will happen that inevitably allow you to save that person and make everything ok. Don't worry about the fact that the person you're trying to save is on death row and their execution date is approaching fast; you don't need to actually go through any back-breaking work to get a re-trial or overturn their conviction, because everything will just work itself out by miracle.
• Always remember: Whenever you're accusing someone of murder, you must contemplate each and every little detail as to how the murder could have been committed and think of motives and alibis, even if it's not your occupation to do so. If you don't, your defendant will be found guilty under completely nonsensical circumstances!
• It's okay for the prosecution to ask for motives of the person you're accusing, but when you ask for motives regarding the defendant, everyone will attack you.
• Don't you dare think for a second that defeating the supposedly unbeatable prosecutor who had won every case for 40 years until now will make you deserving of any respect, you stuck-up loser. People will still treat you like a butt, like they always have.
• Lawyer = Butt-Monkey.
• Even if your actions lead to numerous innocent people getting executed, including those who were just trying to prevent said innocent people from an unjust death, it's okay as long as you were being blackmailed to do it.
  • However, if you had someone get executed using fake evidence that you had no way of knowing was fake, that's terrible.
• Evil people will always overreact when arrested. If someone hasn't had an overreaction, then it is likely that you were on the wrong path.
• You can never have a healthy sibling relationship where both parties are alive and free. The only way for both to have positive lives is if they don't know they have a sibling.
• If you don't have magical supernatural powers, you don't deserve the throne. Never mind if your leadership skills are actually legitimate or not, with or without inherited mumbo-jumbo.
  • By extension, if your daughter is a Muggle Born of Mages, she is destined to cause an upheaval against the Rightful Leader^note who is a Mage born of Mages jeopardizing dozens if not thousands of lives; especially if said Rightful Leader is the Muggle's sister.
• If your parent was a criminal, you are as well, no matter how good you are as a person. In fact, you don't even deserve to be heir to the throne if so. See it as punishment for nothing you ever did.
  • However, if you were too stupid to tell that your parent was committing a crime, even if it lead you to make horrible decisions on your own, you can still be redeemed if you just cry a bunch to the right people.
• It doesn't matter if they're innocent, downright evil, or even threatening your life. Never kill anyone... unless you're an assassin. If you're an assassin, you will get away with any murders you commit and all culpability will be passed onto the person who hired you. And even if you're jailed, you'll still get the Luxury Prison Suite.
• If you have problems with your boss and what he tells you to do, just quit and continue doing your job anyways even though you now have to trespass to do it. After all, if he really is a dick, he probably did something illegal. Besides, morals will always win over the law.
• If there is a witness to a crime, and they do not wish to testify about it, and the prosecution agrees to not call them to the stand, then you can be 100% assured that they are the true criminal.
• If somebody looks overly evil in appearance, then they're evil. If somebody looks overly sweet and innocent in appearance, then they're even more evil.
• Everyone can speak your language. Anyone who claims to be unable to do so is lying.
• There is no such thing as "contempt of court". Except when you want there to be.
• Ace Attorney Investigations 2: There is absolutely no physical evidence that can be used to determine if a nation's president is an impostor or not. For all you know, your country's ruler is long dead and has been replaced.
• Taking down an international conspiracy is easy. All you need to do is get people to kill each other and then let the legal system do the rest.
• If a witness is constantly laughing while testifying, penalize the defense attorney.
• Evidence is everything in court, because it is impossible to commit a crime without leaving evidence behind, and any person's testimony is bound to contain lies. However, the act of destroying or forging evidence will never leave evidence behind, and can only be proven by trusting someone's testimony.
• People who commit murders will frequently faint immediately afterward while still holding the murder weapon and often other evidence establishing their motive. This makes them easy for the police to apprehend. Oddly, whenever a plucky defense attorney proves that someone else committed the murder, none of those culprits had ever fainted immediately after committing the crime.
• If you're a good person, Accidental Murder or Killing in Self-Defense is impossible for you to do.
• Defense attorneys should only defend innocent people. Defending a guilty person with the aim of ensuring the police and prosecution did its job properly, or presenting mitigating circumstances that could reduce a criminal's sentence, is not part of the job.

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