Ace Attorney

Have you guys played the Ace Attorney games from Capcom?

I played through the first four a while back. Pretty fun, although annoyingly linear at times. I bring it up because I’m thinking of checking out the fifth game, which takes over from the prosecution’s point of view. (You play the defense attorney in the main series.)

I remember wondering at the time I was playing the games how close it was to Japan’s actual criminal law system. In the game’s (hopefully very fictitious) legal system, defendants are immediately given a bench trial with a time limit of three days. Also, corruption/incompetence seem to abound, so you’re basically guilty until proven innocent.

While this does seem like a terrible system that is incredibly lop-sided, it makes me wonder if there are fair and effective ways to speed up the trial process short of making more courts to hear cases.

I think the take-away lesson from the games, though, is that if you ever find yourself on trial, be sure to yell “Objection!” as loudly and confidently as possible when you can. (But not too much, because three bad objections and you lose the case!) Oh, and strike a pose like so -

I will be sure to do this when I am in moot court.