Mike Meekins


 * "Mike" redirects here. You may be looking for Benjamin Woodman, whose stage name in the the French localization is "Mike".

"Mike Meekins"

- DOWN ON YOUR HANDS!!! FLOOR ON YOUR HEAD!!!

Mike Meekins is a clumsy and excitable individual who was an initial suspect in both the "murder" of Bruce Goodman in the evidence room of the Los Angeles police department and in the murder that occurred at the Gatewater Land theme park.

He was a police officer at the aforementioned points in time, but has since been demoted to court bailiff for various acts of incompetency.

The "murder" of "Bruce Goodman"

 * Main article: Rise from the Ashes

One day in 2017, Meekins was tasked to guard the police department's evidence room, despite his regular role in recruitment. This kind of re-assignment was common during evidence transferal. He entered the room once to store a dancing Blue Badger panel. Later, he noticed a suspicious individual entering the evidence room. He confronted the intruder and asked for an ID, but the intruder drew a knife instead. Meekins tried to tackle the intruder, but his hand was cut. Meekins was punched, and he blacked out. The next thing he knew, the intruder had been revealed to be detective Bruce Goodman, and he had been murdered. Goodman had been seen being killed in the prosecutor's office by Lana Skye; however, Meekins and the police were convinced that Meekins had killed Goodman in the evidence room, though the body had disappeared.

Due to the initial confusion over what exactly had happened, Meekins was not initially arrested, and was tasked to send a report describing Goodman's "murder" in the evidence room to prosecutor Miles Edgeworth, but he was irritably dismissed before the young officer could explain himself.

The following day, Meekins was formally arrested and accused of this second murder. On the witness stand the day after that, he admitted to the murder and accepted whatever punishment was dealt to him. He testified about his "murder", but Phoenix Wright, who was representing Skye in court, found inconsistencies between what was known and the video recording of the scuffle. Wright demonstrated that since Goodman's ID had been found at the prosecutor's office and Goodman's card had been used to access the evidence room, someone else had stolen the card and posed as Goodman. Meekins did not realize this because he had never met Goodman before. The fake Goodman had attacked Meekins to avoid being found out with an inconsistent ID.

It was proven in court that the Goodman in the evidence room was, in fact, Jake Marshall. Marshall had been desperate to have the SL-9 Incident case reopened, and thus he had stolen Goodman's card key to access the evidence room, only to encounter Meekins. Nonetheless, the evidence room had been the true crime scene. Goodman had been murdered after Meekins's encounter with Marshall. Wright later went on to prove that it had been Chief of Police Damon Gant who had killed Goodman.

The Blue Badger

 * Main article: The Kidnapped Turnabout

Two years after Goodman's murder, the police department participated in an Interpol investigation at Gatewater Land. Lance Amano had been kidnapped for ransom, and for reasons unknown at the time, an Interpol team had stepped in and taken charge of the investigation into the kidnapping. Meekins was tasked to go undercover as one of the Badger entertainers in the park, and so he donned a Blue Badger costume and began his investigation. However, Meekins became so caught up in his cover that he had forgotten about his real job, and he drove around on his "Blue Badgermobile" spreading joy to the children in the park. Eventually, he lost the Blue Badgermobile and his gun, and he walked to the Wild, Wild West area of the park to look for it.

Meekins stayed in the Wild, Wild West area for an hour, during which he spotted another Blue Badger. Miles Edgeworth, who had himself been kidnapped after attempting to deliver the requested ransom money, then found Meekins and questioned him on his whereabouts. Realizing that the other Blue Badger had to have been one of the kidnappers, Edgeworth and Faraday searched for footprints in the area, which led them to the corpse of Oliver Deacon, the Amano family butler. Upon arriving at the scene, Shi-Long Lang, the head of the Interpol team, promptly arrested Meekins for murdering Deacon.

Lang's main argument against Meekins was that only the police force had easy access to guns, and none of the guns in the police force or the Interpol team had been fired. Since Meekins had lost his gun, the fact that he had not fired it could not be verified, but he seemed to be the only person who could have committed the murder. Edgeworth questioned Meekins about his exploits with the Blue Badgermobile. He then convinced Lang that his accusation against Meekins was unsubstantiated. Lang later found Meekins's gun, and Meekins was cleared of the crime.

Court bailiff

 * Main article: Turnabout Succession

"Mike Meekins"

- Sir I... I wish I didn't have to tell you this... but last year, tragedy struck a rising star at the precinct! I lost my case files four times... in three days! They fired me!

At some point after the incident at Gatewater Land, Meekins lost his case files four times in three days. He also lost his badge. This was obviously the final straw for his superiors and he was demoted to court bailiff.

One notable case in which Meekins played the role of bailiff was Magnifi Gramarye's murder case one year after Meekin's demotion. The trial abruptly ended when Phoenix Wright, the lawyer for defendant Zak Gramarye, was caught trying to present forged evidence. However, before the judge could render the verdict, Zak disappeared from the courtroom. Meekins chased who he thought was Zak into Defendant Lobby No. 2, but inside the Lobby, he instead only found Zak's daughter Trucy.

Wright returned to Defendant Lobby No. 2 and found Meekins there. Wright figured out that Trucy had used her giant "Mr. Hat" puppet to lure Meekins away from the real Zak.

Personality
Meekins is a clumsy, excitable and overzealous individual. He often salutes, calls everyone "sir", and uses his megaphone for dramatic effect even if the person he is talking to is standing right beside him. His clumsiness is easily demonstrated by the fact that he cannot even get out of his car without getting his tie caught in the car door two-thirds of the time; the remaining times it's his I.D. card. He even bungled bandaging a cut on his hand by covering his entire hand in bandages. Perhaps appropriately, considering his excitability and clumsiness, he aspires to one day to be like Detective Dick Gumshoe.

Meekins also seems to be sensitive about the topic of love, particularly "high school sweethearts"; he misinterprets Wright's attorney's badge as a "high school sweetheart badge", and that the lawyer is bragging about it. Meekins then starts ranting about how life is not all about "young love", seemingly upset. This may be due to an apparent "failed relationship" of his that he mentions at one point.

Name

 * "Susumu" (ススム) is a common given name for Japanese males, and means "to press forward".


 * "Meekins" probably comes from the adjective "meek", which can mean "humble", "modest", "self-effacing" or "submissive".


 * "Mike" may have come from the word "microphone". Meekins can often be seen with a megaphone, which uses a microphone in its operation. Also, "Mike" is a nickname for "Michael", suggesting his full name may be "Michael Meekins".


 * "Ballaud" is a pun on the French word "balourd", meaning "clumsy". Another possibility comes from the French phrase "c'est ballot!", used when someone does something particularly foolish.

Development

 * The character specification given to character designer Kazuya Nuri was: "He's pretty annoying, but also lovable".


 * Shu Takumi has described Meekins as "existing in another world from ours".


 * Meekins caused some problems in the Japanese version during coding, since the developers gave him a ridiculously over-polite manner of speech. This meant that he took up too much room on the screen when he was speaking.


 * The Japanese names of Meekins and Goodman were apparently chosen together.


 * The kanji on Meekins's arm band (仮免) reads as karimen, and means temporary or provisional license.