Juniper Woods

Juniper Woods is a childhood friend of Athena Cykes. She is also a third-year student and the student council president at the Themis Legal Academy, where she is studying to be a judge. A somewhat meek and quiet girl, Woods has a habit of going into coughing fits when stressed.

Early life
Woods, like Cykes, didn't attend school regularly due to health issues; Woods herself suffered from frequent coughing fits, while Cykes found it hard to be around groups of people due to her ability to pick up subtle emotions from peoples' voices. Although both girls were quiet, they got along with one another and soon became good friends. However, after Cykes' mother was murdered, she was sent to live in Europe, and so Woods lost touch with her friend.

Murder at the academy

 * Main article: Turnabout Academy

Woods went on to join the judge course at Themis Legal Academy. As a senior in the course, she was required to write a script that would be used in a mock trial. Her script was chosen, but its contents were kept privy only to her and Constance Courte, her professor, in order to keep the trial's "plot" a secret from the participants. Just before the mock trial was due to start, Woods met Phoenix Wright, who had been recently reinstated as an attorney and had been invited to give a talk. Wright had brought along his two employees as well; Apollo Justice and Athena Cykes. Woods was shocked to so suddenly meet her childhood friend again, whom she hadn't seen in seven years. Adding to this was Cykes' complete change in personality. Gone was the quiet and shy girl she had known, replaced by a far more confident and outgoing young woman.

However, while the mock trial was going on, Professor Courte's body was found by a visiting Athena Cykes and Phoenix Wright, and the mock trial was abruptly cut short. While they were waiting for the police to come, Cykes questioned Woods about the mock trial and about her friends, Robin Newman and Hugh O’Conner, and she sensed some discord in their voices about their friendship. When the police arrived, Woods was then arrested on the grounds that the mock trial and Courte's murder were very similar, and she was the only person to have any details about the case.

While she was in the process of being taken away, Cykes stepped up and said she'd take Woods' case. When Cykes came to question Woods at the detention center, Woods dropped her strong façade, showing her true, more meek, self to Cykes and Justice.

During the trial the next day, Woods confessed to Professor Courte's murder in an attempt to protect her friends from accusation. However, both Newman and O'Conner then confessed as well, leaving the judge with no choice but to end the trial for the day so that the prosecution and defense could sort out the mess.

When Cykes and Justice went back to the detention center after the trial, Justice sensed that Woods was lying to them about something. After finding her tell, she told them that she saw O'Conner walking out of the art room with bloodstained hands, and thought he was the murderer, as well as telling them that she was Professor Courte's snitch, and that she figured out that O'Conner was bribing the school. She refused to talk about it for fear that O’Conner would be incriminated, and believed herself to be a horrible friend for suspecting him. However, the next day, Cykes proved that it had been Professor Aristotle Means who had been taking bribes from O'Conner's parents, and that Means had killed Courte when she found out.

After the trial Woods thanked Cykes and Justice, but also blushed and started knitting a heart-covered scarf when talking to the latter. Later, Woods was able to perform "The Guitar's Serenade" at the school festival with Klavier Gavin, as was originally intended. Before she began singing however, she caught sight of Justice watching in the audience and began blushing again. She performance went perfectly, with Newman in particular praising her singing voice.

A murderer and a bomber?

 * Main articles: Turnabout Countdown

Less than two months after the murder at Themis Legal Academy, she visited Justice during his next case, and was in the gallery when Ted Tonate announced that there was a live bomb in the courtroom. She fell trying to escape, but Justice shielded her from falling rubble, albeit being injured himself in the process.

Woods was then accused of planting the bomb that had destroyed the courtroom, as well as killing a detective found dead at the scene called Candice Arme. Cykes was initially her defense attorney yet again, but soon began to stumble on her own, then began to have a mental breakdown. Luckily for Cykes and Woods, Phoenix Wright soon arrived to take over, and soon started turning the case around.

However, during a recess, Woods, Cykes, and Wright found Justice lying unconscious in the ruins of courtroom 4 after being assaulted, which Woods was subsequently accused of. However, Wright was able to prove that Detective Arme's killer and the person who assaulted Justice was bomb specialist Ted Tonate, thus proving Woods' innocence.

Visiting the Cosmos Space Center

 * Main articles: Turnabout For Tomorrow

Upon hearing that Cykes had been arrested for Clay Terran's murder, Woods visited the Cosmos Space Center, where the crime had occurred. While in the building's Space Museum, she met Wright, who proceeded to ask her about Cykes' past. Woods told Wright that Cykes had grown up at the space center with her mother, and that the center's robots were Cykes' only real company while she was there. This lead helped Wright to eventually figure out not only the truth behind the current case, but another seven years previously, thus clearing Cykes of all charges. Woods then joined the defense attorneys and their friends at a local noodle stand for a celebratory meal.

Personality
Although a shy and meek girl, Woods puts on a stern and confident persona in her role as the student council president. Her health has always been poor, which manifests itself as coughing fits when she is stressed or upset; she controls these by breathing from the sunflowers she wears on her head. When she drops her persona, she also has the habit of pausing and stuttering during everyday conversation.

Woods has something of a crush on Apollo Justice; when thinking about him she wears a dreamy facial expression and knits a very long, scarf-like object with an abundance of hearts on it. According to her (while talking with Cykes), just thinking about him gives her strength, especially when he smiled at her when there seemed to be no hope. Woods enjoys gardening, knitting, and sewing; she claimed to have made her casual clothes herself.

Like her friends Newman and O’Conner, Woods took the friendship between them very seriously, to the point where she was greatly distressed at the possibility of O’Conner being the murderer. She wears one of three bands made by Newman as their "proof of friendship" on her right wrist, and clings to it habitually as a reminder of their friendship when worried.

Name

 * The "mori" (森) in her Japanese surname means "forest".


 * Depending on the kanji used, her Japanese given name "Shinobu" can mean "endure", "purify", "belief", "intention", "recall", or "remember".


 * Both her given and family names in the English version are botanically-themed; juniper being a type of coniferous plant. This is in keeping with her casual clothing having plant motifs.

Development

 * Juniper Woods' costume design for the school festival is almost identical to that worn by Lamiroir when she sung "The Guitar's Serenade" in Turnabout Serenade (even her friendship bracelet is almost exactly where Lamiroir's bracelet is). Oddly, neither Apollo Justice, Trucy Wright, nor Klavier Gavin make any comment on this, despite all three having met Lamiroir in said costume.


 * Juniper's casual clothes bear a striking resemblance to one of Dahlia Hawthorne's [[Media:Fanbook Dahlia 2.jpg|early character designs]], where she is depicted in a similar hat and dress, as well as knitting a scarf.


 * Her last name was misspelled as "Wood" in a "fact sheet" for Dual Destinies ahead of E3 2013.