- Phoenix! Are you absolutely sure you're up to this?
I'm sorry. I can't with her outfit.
(laughs)
(upbeat music)
My name is Diana Aizman.
I am a criminal defense attorney and trial attorney.
I'm a former prosecutor for the City of Los Angeles.
The primary function of my job is justice.
It's to make sure that justice is done in the court system.
I sometimes represent victims
and most of the time represent defendants
that are accused of crimes.
I work primarily in the state criminal courts,
and usually, it's just the prosecutor
and the defense attorney negotiating dispositions
and exchanging discovery on behalf of a client.
It is impossible for me to watch
any show based on the criminal justice system.
It is usually completely inaccurate
because there are rules that we all have to abide by,
and if they displayed an accurate representation
of what those rules are,
it would be really boring programming.
When I was in law school, actually,
we had a game that helped us prepare
for trial advocacy situations.
I think it was called Objection.
And that actually helped prepare me for the bar exam.
So I guess in that sense,
I do have some video game experience
pertaining to this kind of thing,
but just looking at the graphics here,
I'm gonna guess it's probably not super accurate.
Let's do this.
August 3rd, 9:47 a.m., District Court,
Defendant Lobby number two.
Boy am I nervous.
Oh my god.
Oh, hiya, Chief.
I think she'd be admonished and thrown out of court
for wearing that.
Whew, I'm glad I made it on time.
The dominatrix gig takes a lot of time out of her day.
It's over.
My life, everything, it's all over.
Is that your client screaming over there?
Yeah, that's always good.
Hey. Hey there, Larry.
Larry needs a minute to come down off of the meth.
My name is Phoenix Wright.
Here's the story.
My first case is a fairly simple one.
A young woman was killed in her apartment.
The guy they arrested was the unlucky sap dating her.
Larry Butz, my best friend since grade school.
But I know better than anyone that he's a good guy at heart.
That, and I owe him one,
which is why I took the case, to clear his name.
(crowd murmuring)
No one uses a gavel in a state court.
The prosecution is ready, Your Honor.
The, um, defense is ready, Your Honor.
Mr. Wright?
This is your first trial, is it not?
Y-yes, Your Honor.
I'm, um, a little nervous.
I think we should have a test to ascertain your readiness.
Yes, Your Honor.
That doesn't happen.
The judge doesn't give you a test
to determine whether or not you're capable of being
an effective advocate for your client.
Please state the name of the defendant in this case.
Okay, so Larry Butz.
The defendant?
Well, that's Larry Butz, Your Honor.
Next question.
This is a murder trial.
Tell me, what's the victim's name?
Whew, I know this one!
Glad I read the case report cover to cover so many times.
That's all it takes, really,
is you just have to read the police report,
and you're totally ready to handle a murder trial.
That's a joke.
No, no way! I forgot!
I'm drawing a total blank here!
Phoenix! Are you absolutely sure you're up to this?
I'm sorry. I can't with her outfit.
(laughs)
It's gotta be this one
'cause I don't remember Cinder Block.
The victim's name is Cindy Stone.
Correct.
She died because she was?
Hit with a blunt object.
Correct.
The murder weapon was this statue of The Thinker.
Statue added to the Court Record.
A statue in the shape of The Thinker.
It's rather heavy.
The prosecution calls the defendant.
It's the Constitution, and it prevents the prosecution
from not only being able to call the defendant
to testify against himself,
but can't even comment on the fact
that the defendant has chosen not to take the stand.
This is a blatant violation
of this man's constitutional rights.
Uh oh, Larry gets excited easily.
This is could be bad.
Which is one of the things you take into consideration
as a defense attorney
as to why you don't put your client on the stand.
If they don't come off well,
if they're not gonna testify well,
then that's gonna be extremely problematic for our case.
Mr. Butz, is it not true
that the victim had recently dumped you?
We were great together!
We were Romeo and Juliet, Cleopatra and Marc Anthony!
I wasn't dumped!
She just wasn't taking my phone calls.
Or seeing me, ever.
Your Honor, the victim's passport.
According to this,
she was in Paris until the day before she died.
The victim apparently arrived home from Paris
on July 30th, the day before the murder.
You went to the victim's apartment on the day of the murder,
did you not?
Heh, heh, heh, heh.
Well, maybe I did, and maybe I didn't.
This is why I can't watch TV shows
that are based on the criminal justice system.
They go a lot like this.
Have him answer honestly.
Stop him from answering is always the answer.
I'll send him a signal.
No.
Lie like a dog?
No, that's suborning perjury.
Don't do that.
This game should be called
How to Not Defend Somebody in a Murder Case.
Um, well, see, it's like this.
I don't remember.
You don't remember?
Well then, we'll just have to remind you.
We have a witness that can prove
he did go to the victim's apartment that day.
Well, that simplifies matters.
Who is your witness?
The man who found the victim's body.
What? Why isn't that guy a suspect?
Just before making the gruesome discovery,
he saw the defendant fleeing the scene of the crime.
(crowd murmuring)
Order! Order in the court!
I never heard that ever, not even once.
Except for on TV.
Mr. Payne, the prosecution may call its witness.
On the day of the murder,
my witness was selling newspapers at the victim's building.
Please bring Mr. Frank Sahwit to the stand!
So let's just see what happens here.
You sell newspaper subscriptions, is this correct?
Okay, objection, that's a leading question.
When you have a witness on direct examination,
you can only ask them open-ended questions.
I was going door-to-door, selling subscriptions
when I saw a man fleeing an apartment.
I thought he must be in a hurry
because he left the door half-open behind him.
Thinking it strange, I looked inside the apartment.
Then I saw her lying there, a woman, not moving, dead.
I quailed in fright and found myself unable to go inside.
I thought to call the police immediately!
However, the phone in her apartment wasn't working.
I went to a nearby park and found a public phone.
This takes place in the '80s.
There was no cellphones.
I remember the time exactly.
It was 1:00 p.m.
The man who ran was, without a doubt,
the defendant sitting right over there.
Why wasn't the phone in the victim's apartment working?
Your Honor, at the time of the murder,
there was a blackout in the building.
Mr. Wright, you may cross-examine the witness.
You know what to do!
Clearly, he does not know what to do.
So it was 1:00 p.m., which is between the blackout.
Oh, she dies at 4:00 p.m.
The autopsy report indicates that the time of death
is sometime between 4:00 and 5:00 p.m.,
which is a way smaller window
than they're probably usually able to give you,
but that's great, because it narrows it down
and it shows that if he saw her at 1:00 p.m.,
then he's either mistaken or he's lying.
You found the body at 1:00 p.m.
You're sure?
Yes, it was 1:00 p.m. for certain.
Frankly, I find that hard to believe!
Okay, don't say that.
The autopsy notes the time of death
at sometime after 4:00 p.m.
There was nobody to, er, no body to find at 1:00 p.m.
How do you explain this three-hour gap?
Oh, that.
Oh, er.
Great job, Wright!
Way to put him on the spot!
See through one, and their whole story falls apart!
That's actually something that was taught to me
in trial advocacy as well.
The devil is in the details.
So when I was a prosecutor
and I was conducting cross-examination
of eyewitnesses that were testifying
on behalf of the defense, they would tell one small lie
in some of my cases,
and if I just keep unraveling that particular fact pattern,
they have to continue lying,
and they eventually will catch themselves
in a very obvious lie for the jury,
and that will discount all of the rest of their testimony.
Wait, I remember now.
You see, when I found the body, I heard the time.
There was a voice saying the time.
It was probably coming from the television.
Oh, but it was three hours off, wasn't it?
I guess the victim must have been watching a video
of a taped program.
That's why I thought it was 1:00 p.m.
Terribly sorry about the misunderstanding.
Notice anything suspicious?
Oh, she couldn't have been watching television.
The electricity was out.
You couldn't have heard a television or a video!
Do you have an explanation for this, Mr. Sahwit?
Also not something that happens
during the cross-examination.
It would be left to the prosecutor to redirect this witness
to explain any inconsistencies.
Well, wait, I remember now!
Mr. Sahwit?
The court would prefer to hear an accurate testimony
from the very beginning.
It would prefer, in this murder trail,
maybe, potentially, if you could not lie,
that would be really helpful.
Let's hear your testimony once more, please.
Really, again?
Let's do this, sure.
Actually, I didn't hear the time.
I saw it.
There was a table clock in the apartment, wasn't there?
Yeah.
He's asking himself and answering his own question,
in case you were wondering.
Yeah, the murder weapon!
The killer used it to hit the victim!
That must have been what I saw.
You saw a clock?
I guess that would explain it.
Cross-examination, Hearing the Time.
Actually, I didn't hear the time.
I saw it.
There was table clock in the apartment, wasn't there?
Yeah, the murder weapon that the killer used
to hit the victim.
That must have been what I saw.
It's a statue.
- [Phoenix] Objection!
- The murder weapon wasn't a clock.
It was this statue!
Hey, I, I saw it there, okay?
That's a clock!
Your Honor, if I may.
Everyone's sweating profusely.
As the witness stated, this statue is indeed a clock.
The neck is a switch.
You just tilt it, and it says the time out loud.
So the murder weapon was a table clock after all.
It appears that the witness's testimony was correct.
This is a clock.
Do you have any problems with his testimony now?
Yes, yes, I have problems.
The only way he could have known the weapon was a clock
is to hold it in his hand.
Yet the witness testified
that he never entered the apartment.
Aha.
Hmm, indeed.
The witness knew it was a clock, because he...
He went into the apartment.
You were inside of the apartment on the day of the murder.
Oh yeah? Prove it!
Prove I went in there.
I'll do better than that.
I can prove you were the one who killed her.
You struck her with the clock,
and the shock of the blow triggered the clock's voice.
That was the sound you heard.
- [Winston] Objection!
- What's the meaning of this?
That's not a legal objection.
This is all baseless conjecture.
Also not a legal objection.
Did you strike the victim with the clock?
Look, I, the clock, I heard, no.
I mean, I saw, saw, ohh.
Gwah!
Oh, okay.
Do you have any evidence?
Again, he is not the one
that's supposed to bring forth evidence.
The sound Mr. Sahwit heard was definitely this clock,
a fact which is clear if you simply...
Try sounding the clock.
Let's sound the clock now, here in this court.
I ask the court to listen very carefully.
I'd like to see the DNA report on the clock.
I think it's 8:25.
That is certainly a strange way to announce the time.
Mr. Payne, can you tell me what time it is now?
It's 11:25.
Ack!
As you can see, this clock is exactly three hours slow,
precisely the discrepancy between what Mr. Sahwit heard
and the actual time of death.
You forgot one thing!
Uh oh, what's he talking about now?
While it may seem like that clock is running
three hours slow, it proves nothing!
How do you know it was running three hours slow
on the day of the murder?
He's right!
How am I going to prove that?
Dammit!
I was so close.
And then the burden of proof shifted to the defense,
and all hell broke loose.
Not so fast, Mr. Sahwit!
Mia! I mean, Chief!
Listen up, Wright.
Can you think of a reason as to why the clock
would be three hours slow?
I mean, I'm sure there's a reason.
Let's see the evidence that proves
why the clock was running slow.
I'm gonna go with that one, the blackout record.
Um, excuse me.
This proves your claim how?
Well, it was a plug-in clock and the power went out.
Maybe it was out for three hours, and now it's, you know.
I can't see what that evidence has to do
with the clock.
D'oh! That wasn't it!
All right, Mr. Wright.
Okay, he's got another chance.
Here we go.
Is it the passport?
The victim got home from Paris.
Is there only a three-hour time change
between Paris and here
and she took the clock with her to Paris?
Yeah, it's gotta be the passport.
Let's try that.
- [Phoenix] Take that!
- The victim had just returned home from abroad
the day of the murder.
When it's 4:00 p.m. here,
it's 1:00 a.m. the next day there.
The clock wasn't three hours slow.
It was nine hours fast.
Oh, it didn't specify whether there was an a.m.
or a p.m. component.
I would have picked that first.
The victim, and why did she take her clock with her
to Paris?
The victim hadn't reset her clock since returning home.
And it was heavy.
Do you know expensive it would be in her luggage
to take a heavy statue to Paris?
That's why the time you hear when you struck her dead
in her apartment was wrong.
Proof enough for you, Mr. Sahwit?
Or should I say Mr. Did It?
Oh my god, what happened?
Did he chew a cyanide container?
He just foamed at the mouth and then keeled over.
Order, order, I say.
I have to say, I'm impressed.
I don't think I've ever seen someone complete a defense
so quickly, and find the true culprit at the same time.
Yes, it's all of our dream
to have it actually go something like this.
Thank you, Your Honor.
At this point, this is only a formality, but
this court finds the defendant, Mr. Larry Butz, not guilty.
What are these jurors doing there?
And with that, this court is adjourned.
Victory, not guilty verdict.
From the judge, but whatever, we'll take it.
You know, the client gets to go home
and deal with his meth habit
or whatever is going on with his eyes,
but not guilty on the murder, with cross-examination
of apparently the prosecution's witness,
despite the fact that the client took the stand first
and testified.
Totally unrealistic.
The biggest issues that I have here is,
one is that the defendant took the stand
as part of the prosecution's case in chief.
That doesn't happen ever.
He is constitutionally protected from having to do that.
And the other thing is that the burden shifted in the middle
from having to have the prosecutor prove
beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was guilty
to having the defense attorney prove
that he did not do it and that this other person did.
Oftentimes, in our cases, especially in a trial setting,
when we have a plausible other party
that could potentially be a suspect,
you want to bring that out,
but you have to do it artfully,
and you want to do it within the rules of evidence.
None of the rules of evidence applied in this game.
Some of the advice that the dominatrix gave,
she says, essentially, that once you find a lie,
it begets more lies, and that's true.
If you can exploit the one lie,
then it will ultimately unravel,
and you'll be able to catch the person in a lie,
and that will demonstrate
that they are an uncredible witness.