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Night10194 posted:Japanifornian Law is biased against the defendant and this explains the 99% conviction rate. At the end of the first case the judge is like "I've never seen anyone prove their client innocent so fast and also find the real killer at the same time" and that goes out the window, like, instantly. I've only played the second game all the way through but there's at least one case where you conclusively prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that your client is innocent before you make any headway on fingering the real killer. If you don't find the real culprit before the judge gets fed up with your bullshit and says "I'm bored so the case is over now," your client is still pronounced guilty because they have to execute someone.
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Apr 3, 2016 21:48
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Mzbundifund posted:Also Gumshoe was the one investigating the crime scene, and not finding something like hidden clockwork is par for this particular course. I remember in the beginning of one case the second game implies that there actually are other officers investigating crime scenes, but they're better at their jobs and less devoted to actual justice, so it's a better use of Phoenix's time to just go straight to Gumshoe. Not much better, because the reveal is Gumshoe mentioning everyone had a good laugh at one of the other officers slipping on something at the crime scene and making a mess. But better enough that they don't tell the defense attorney useful information. E: I misread you the first time and thought you said Gumshoe was "the only one" investigation. Dr. Buttass fucked around with this message at 05:29 on Apr 7, 2016 |
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Apr 7, 2016 05:12
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Zero Suit Ridley posted:Gumshoe is a totally good guy, pal, and really honest, see? It's why he's one of the best characters, pal. I am, in no uncertain terms, saying that being honest and a good guy and the best character make Police Detective Richard Gumshoe bad at his job of being a policeman officer.
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Apr 7, 2016 07:27
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Y'know, again...satire onna Japanese system. The entire point of a defense attorney is basically to play the same role as Ralph at the beginning of Wreck-It Ralph; pretty crucial to the whole enterprise but everyone else wishes they'd drop dead or disappear or something and stop ruining everyone else's fun.Mzbundifund posted:Phoenix Wright does have one unfair advantage, namely he can present any incriminating object from within his coat pocket and the court has to take his word for it that he totally found this wiretap in the witness' hotel room, your honor. There are definite evidence submission rules in place in this court, they just get glossed over because they're boring; one of the prosecutors in the second game abuses them.
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Apr 11, 2016 05:26
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No, I think RedMagus is on the money. He's not playing fair, he's just kind of the prosecutorial office's answer to Detective Gumshoe.
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Apr 13, 2016 01:40
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That's a very punchable face. I want to punch that face.
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Apr 16, 2016 00:03
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Shady Amish Terror posted:He's also apparently willing to implicate a witness in, and make them confess to, other crimes in order to make his current case, which is amusing, but completely in keeping with what little we've seen of him so far; after all, he's trying Phoenix here, not explicitly defending White. I get that a B&E case or tax fraud would theoretically not be as dramatic to watch, wouldn't have the tension of potential capital punishment at risk if you fail, and just generally sounds a lot less glamorous to say you're prosecuting a trial for, but sometimes I get the impression that the only crime the legal system actually bothers dealing with is murder. Wiretapping is "illegal," but the only enforcement is the social pressure to not do illegal things.
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Apr 24, 2016 02:39
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It's more that Edgeworth is convinced that everyone is guilty of something, so "innocent until proven guilty" and "guilty until proven innocent" are fundamentally irrelevant concepts; there's no point in either assuming or proving innocence because guilt is a foregone conclusion. As long as he gets a guilty verdict, it doesn't matter if they committed the crime they were actually tried for, because they deserved to be punished regardless. Phoenix, conversewise, understands concepts like nuance, and punishment proportionate to the crime, and not all crimes being equal, and the fact that while from a very specific, narrow perspective Edgeworth is right, what most people are "guilty" of are minor social sins they may or may not have committed accidentally, and warrant more of a gentle talking-to than jail time and/or death.
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Apr 24, 2016 21:49
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whitehelm posted:Where do you get any of that? Edgeworth said right at the beginning of this day's trial that there's no way to tell who's guilty or innocent, so he makes sure all the defendants get declared guilty. He'd rather innocent people go to jail than guilty people being free. Same diff. Either way, in itself his philosophy is somewhat troubling for a number of reasons, but re: this conversation the main reason it's troubling is that we're not really talking about jail time here. In Japanifornia the punishment for murder is death. Therefore, every time the actual murderer manages to plant some circumstantial evidence and spin a flimsy yarn, the state executes an innocent person. That's what's so messed up about the case I mentioned earlier, where you can conclusively prove your client was innocent, but still get a guilty verdict. It literally just boils down to the judge saying, "well, we gotta put someone in the chair."
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Apr 25, 2016 03:48
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RedMagus posted:can I say how I love how we're all so focused on the trial and Edgeworth that no one has mentioned the fact that there's a ghost in the court room? I think that at least three-quarters of us are familiar enough with the Ace Attorney series as a whole that we know what is the deal with that and it's no longer a twist for us.
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Apr 26, 2016 01:00
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theshim posted:Yeah, this is unfortunate. The series as a whole is fantastic and nearly every single case has amazing twists at the end, but this case is simply ended with a flat out Mia ex machina. It's that it's such an exception that makes it really bug me, but it also means that the resolutions to other cases are thankfully superb. It's not quite an rear end-pull, but it's got the same smell and flavor as one. I'm pretty sure this is the evidence Mia hid in The Thinker, or at least a copy of it; I'm like almost positive she wrote it down on the spot from memory. It's the focus of the phone conversation, but aside from the recording of the conversation being played a couple times it doesn't really come up in any significant way during the trial, even though it's definitively White's motive for killing Mia. Kopijeger posted:Having the clothing and hairstyle of Maya makes sense. Appearing to have her own body and face yet having Maya's hair colour much less so. Remember this later, it will be important.
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Apr 28, 2016 07:00
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Polaron posted:The security lady mentions a couple of times how horrible it is for the victim to have been "reduced" to playing villains but I've worked on a few movies and the actors playing the villains are always having the most fun. It might be a cultural thing. Maybe in Japan playing the villain really is the worse role; there's a lot that actually gets lost in translation. Like, a lot of women in anime are popular in the West because they kick ridiculous amounts of rear end, but apparently in Japan they're supposed to be jokes. Like, can you imagine? A woman, being tough and self-reliant and capable and saying witty poo poo and getting angry when men are rude to her and getting away with it! If I tried to think of something more absurd than that I would literally die in the attempt.
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May 1, 2016 05:13
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legoman727 posted:Meet the Security Lady. She's.. ho boy. We'll get into her only redeeming feature later on in the case, but for my money she's probably one of the worst characters in the entire series. The Steel Samurai is cool though. She's the worst character during the interactive parts of the game. She's one of the best when literally anyone who isn't you has to deal with her; in the entire series, those occasions when Edgeworth has the bright idea to call Wendy Oldbag to the stand as a witness are the closest he ever gets to being reprimanded by the judge. Cross-examining her is a huge favor to Edgeworth because that's where most of the actual testimony happens.
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May 1, 2016 11:41
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I look at Maya less as a contrasting example driving Phoenix to grow up, and more of an albatross around his neck in his attempts to. He's trying to be Mr. Serious Lawyer Man and she's going "Hey man watch this rad kids' show with me loosen up my dude."
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May 1, 2016 22:43
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Suspicious Cook posted:Is he though? Jesus, you sound like my dad. Look, it's very simple: Just because he's failing terribly, doesn't mean he's not trying his damnedest.
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May 2, 2016 03:27
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EponymousMrYar posted:There's been a couple clues in the dialogue but the main one I remember is also one that they take a bit getting around to, which annoyed me to no end. It'll become a lot clearer when we see that photo evidence Gumshoe has. I've definitely figured it out, but mainly because I've read a book that uses this same exact plot twist. In the book the character who figures it out spends like an entire page patiently filling in blanks so the other people listening can catch on and still has to just spell it out. It's not even really lateral thinking, it's very straightforward but it breaks a hole in the neat little box the assumptions you're making put everything in.
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May 5, 2016 00:46
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I'm going to be real with you here: if this case goes anything like that book I mentioned, the fourth of those objections is going to be the first time anyone involved even heard anyone say it was theoretically possible someone other than Powers could have been in the suit.
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May 5, 2016 04:30
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Glazius posted:I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have left the bloodstain at a crime scene that was also a workplace. It'd stink to high heaven. And it's unsanitary, you could catch something if the victim happened to have it. Once a time I was at work, temping with a furniture installation company, doing an install for Intel, a dude accidentally cuts himself on some of the product and wanders off to clean himself up. All the while he drips a very clear trail of blood out of the room, down the stairs, presumably all the way to the bathroom. They drat near shut the whole operation down and sent us home for the day while it got cleaned up (they instead eventually opted to clean it up and let us keep working, because it was Saturday and none of the real employees were at risk. Thanks so much for your consideration).
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May 10, 2016 00:12
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On the other hand, we've already noticed just how flimsy a testimony the courts in Japanifornia are willing to accept. Compared to some of those other guys Oldbag is a pretty solid witness.
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May 12, 2016 00:05
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I'll say this for Edgeworth, his poker face sucks, so at least we can tell when he's on the level about his witnesses. Also... Mors Rattus posted:
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May 14, 2016 13:09
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: Are you absolutely sure!?
: Oh, quite, quite, sonny. Nobdoy suspicious lookin' passed by at all.
: (Nobody suspicious lookin'... Right.)
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Funky Valentine posted:As a rule, defendants don't tell Phoenix near enough what they should about the situation. Go look up "learned helplessness" sometime.
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May 19, 2016 00:10
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Leif. posted:The limp hasn't come into play yet has it? Outside of identification I mean? I think the photo album is going to be the piece of evidence that outs Cody's latest lie but I wanna say the limp is gonna be the lynchpin of our whole cross-examination. Surely an obsessive fan like him would notice something out of the ordinary like an injury. Heck, I would have expected someone to convince him to play it up since it would be even more badass if his hero was injured and still beat the bad guy.
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Jun 7, 2016 01:16
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Jabor posted:Even in the private sector there are a ton of "trade secrets" that anyone could legally copy, but are protected by virtue of people not finding out about them. I remember a little while ago there was something of a brouhaha because someone who was being groomed to take over as one of the keepers of the Coca-Cola recipe released it...only for it to turn out that it was a fake recipe to test if he'd actually keep the secret or not.
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Jun 9, 2016 04:43
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Stephen9001 posted:This is equal parts hilarious (how the recipe was fake) and depressing (they were seriously grooming someone to be a holder of their "super secret recipe") Well, the thing about humans is they're mortal, so if you're going to keep a secret for longer than the span of a human life, it's probably prudent to pass it on to someone, and if you want it to stay a secret you should probably make sure it's someone who won't tell other people. So I mean like you're not wrong, but at the same time, you're sorta wrong.
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Jun 9, 2016 23:31
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Regalingualius posted:We seriously fought wars in order to get our hands on bat guano. Phone-posting, or I'd link to anything relevant. I believe that guano from both bats and seabirds contains a fair amount of saltpeter. Turns out we like our corned beef more than you'd expect.
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Jun 12, 2016 02:34
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Manic_Misanthrope posted:They had to have replaced it in 5 years, surely. Even if it did just get turned into an employee area. You're reaching, it's impossible to see if it's bent or not because there's a dead body on it. Also, Penny said the movie set at Studio Two is exactly as it was after the accident. So they definitely didn't replace it.
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Jun 15, 2016 09:57
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I can think of all kinds of ways a guy would end up facing away from his opponent in a fight, even a choreographed one.
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Jun 16, 2016 04:40
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MegaZeroX posted:By the way, if we mess up now, even though it is basically impossible for Will Powers to have done it and we have proven someone else could have conceivably done it, we would still get a guilty verdict. This is not the last time the series will do this, as previously discussed. Somehow no one in Japanifornia seems to think that reaching the point where they need to start euthanizing people for space like a badly-run animal shelter might be a problem in the justice system.
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Jun 26, 2016 05:39
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Plus, it hints at stuff that becomes a major plot/characterization point in the second game. I say this less to spoil and more because I've only really played the second game and now I'm going "oh poo poo" because some stuff is starting to make more sense.
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Jun 26, 2016 22:24
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i81icu812 posted:Yes banning throwing of objects of any sort within town limits is a logical and sensible course of action. If there's one thing I know about people, and especially the sort of people inclined to get up to mayhem but too much of a pussy to deal with the consequences, it's that unless you rigorously define every last minuscule detail/issue an iron-clad no-exceptions blanket declaration (choose whichever seems least necessary under the assumption that people are inherently reasonable), they will seek out any and all loopholes and use them to gently caress life up for everyone else and "get away with it" (scare quotes because there might not be any legal repercussions but guess who's gonna get punched in the teeth).
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Jun 27, 2016 08:17
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i81icu812 posted:I'm really not sure how to illustrate that this line of thinking is absurd better than to point out that the law as written makes throwing any object within town limits against the law. I was going to counterpoint with a long, thought-out explanation about why my whole point is that it's absurd, but I realized I don't need to. Famed animal lover Lord Byron kept a tame bear as a pet at college, explicitly because there was no rule on the books specifically forbidding bears and no rule putting a blanket moratorium on all pets ever, only the specific pets listed in the rules. Now, remember that Lord Byron is not the only person in recorded history to have objected to a rule. QED.
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Jul 2, 2016 03:36
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Elric posted:It seems to me the best way to get away with murder in Japanifornia is to kill someone, write a "confession note" saying that some guy you dislike did it, then skip town for a week. Case will be resolved by the time you come back. I am like, 97% sure this exact comment has already happened in this thread alone. Night10194 posted:Still, this makes it really clear: Edgeworth generally doesn't let himself believe he might be sending an innocent person to jail/the necessary blood sacrifices that keep Japanfornia from slipping into some hellish otherworld. He has to believe the system works to be such an efficient agent of the system and he's pretty pissed that Phoenix has rocked his faith in it. On the other hand, and I do love me some Good Writing, what a great way to show the chops even Phoenix didn't seriously believe he had. All his years as a prosecutor and it's some wet-behind-the-ears baby lawyer who makes Edgeworth seriously consider the possibility that maybe-maybe-he's prosecuting the wrong person Dr. Buttass fucked around with this message at 11:46 on Jul 3, 2016 |
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Jul 3, 2016 11:41
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Zerbin7 posted:Seems a bit dark for Dahl. Not that he had to only write one kind of book, but definitely not what I'd expect from the guy who wrote James and the Giant Peach. I have heard of similar stories, though. Makes working in a deli interesting, if you're in a morbid mood. Yeah I have an anthology with that one in it. Trust me; Dahl was totally up for the weird poo poo.
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Jul 6, 2016 06:23
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A little bit late but I think "Charley" is an obtuse reference to Chuck the Plant, a completely inconsequential background prop from Day of the Tentacle. Chuck had no bearing on anything, but he was pretty great all the same. The story goes that Ron Gilbert really likes the name "Chuck" so he tries to work it into places where he can (see also: LeChuck the pan-undead pirate).
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Jul 10, 2016 06:44
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I gotta be real, that law actually makes a lot of sense. Like, not in the sense that it's a legitimately sensible law to be passing, but in the off chance that Sasquatch is real, who wants to be the guy telling some hillbilly he's free to go because there's no law against shooting Bigfoot? Show of hands. Anyone?
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Jul 17, 2016 05:44
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Stephen9001 posted:I suspect that's the main actual purpose of the law, tell people they can't shoot bigfoot, and they're less likely to accidently shoot innocents who they think are bigfoot. Then again I'm british not american, so perhaps the USA is just crazy. Speaking as an American: that makes zero sense, we are crazy. Anyone who's enough of a ridiculous yahoo to just shoot at indistinct shapes hoping to peg Bigfoot isn't gonna let no sissy law stop 'em. Also, if they do happen to shoot a real person instead, they're not gonna just go to court and go "well your honor, members of the jury, I thought she was Bigfoot when I shot her," and everyone's just going to go, "yeah that's reasonable you're free to go." They're gonna get charged with like, second degree murder or negligent assault. Anyone who would stop and think "It is illegal to shoot Bigfoot here in Washington" would also make absolutely 100% sure they were shooting at Bigfoot in the first place, because (and you will be forgiven for not realizing this, given all the cops who've been on the news lately) it is also illegal to shoot other people, even by accident. Literally the only thing that makes sense is that someone was legitimately afraid that Bigfoot might actually exist, and didn't want to be the guy getting the stinkeye when someone asked, "And why can't we convict Jebediah Strawguy for shooting Bigfoot and making a pair of assless chaps from his pelt?"
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Jul 18, 2016 02:14
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Leif. posted:Perchance are you from Ohio? Oregon, actually. Once you leave the Portland area the only way you can really tell you're not in Ohio is that the scenery's better; the people and the towns are pretty much the same. Shady Amish Terror posted:Or they could just be nutcases themselves. A lot of crazy laws get passed all over the place. This completely misses the point of why dumb laws are great. See, our system of government does one thing right, and that's that if a crazy dude is county commissioner of Multnomah County he can't just go "in the interest of protecting the public's footwear, all citizens are to soak their pink pillows in pickle juice at least once a week or be subject to a $1000 fine" and it's law. Everyone's gonna vote "no." First he's got to convince everyone else that fairies steal shoes but hate the smell of pickle juice (and the pillows must be pink because he wouldn't ask people to sleep on green pillows like some kind of monster), and therefore soaking your pillow in the stuff will keep them away and your shoes will remain unstolen. And only when enough people agree that this is perfectly logical and sensical will it be passed into law. So it is with all the crazy laws that actually exist. At one point in time enough people agreed that it was a perfectly logical and well-thought-out law that needed passing. That was a mistake of phrasing on my part, I talked like it was just one guy who was afraid someone would just skin Bigfoot for chaps and get off scot free, but really one guy had the thought and then at least 51% of the other people in the county went "you know what, he's right, this is a serious problem and we need to fix it on the double." No "dumb laws" story is ever complete without knowing what train of thought made it not a dumb law at all.
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Jul 18, 2016 05:46
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Okay, so I simplified beyond the point where maybe I ought, but nevertheless.
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Jul 19, 2016 04:59
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See also: Multiple series-wide counts of "Mr. Wright, you have conclusively proved that it is physically impossible for your client to be guilty, but you failed to finger the real culprit, so it's off to the chair with them."
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Jul 21, 2016 05:59
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See, I mean, you say that, but the whole point of this expedited three-day trial system is that there are too many trials and too many people in prison and there's not enough room. The Japanifornian legal system is 100% indistinguishable from a PETA dog shelter.
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Jul 21, 2016 06:53
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