Dahlia's Present



Dahlia's present was a necklace with a small bottle on it, given by Dahlia Hawthorne to Phoenix Wright as a present.

Poisoning of Diego Armando
On August 27, 2012, Dahlia met with defense attorney Diego Armando in the courthouse cafeteria. Armando had been investigating the murder of Dahlia's stepsister, Valerie (in which he suspected Dahlia to be involved). Fearful that Armando would find out the truth, Dahlia had filled the bottle in her necklace with poison stolen from her university's pharmacology lab. When Armando wasn't looking, Dahlia slipped the poison into his coffee, putting him into a coma, and fled the scene. Immediately after, she ran into art student Phoenix Wright in the courthouse reading room, and, in order to hide the evidence of her crime, gave the necklace to him, under the pretense of falling in love with him. Although Hawthorne was the prime suspect in the poisoning, she was not arrested because no trace of the poison was found on her.

Attempt to retrieve the necklace
Dahlia soon planned to kill Wright in order to retrieve the necklace. Not wanting Dahlia to commit any more crimes, her twin sister Iris offered to get it back for her. Iris posed as Dahlia and began a relationship with Wright to recover the necklace, but she soon fell in love with him and was unable to make him part with it. After eight months, Dahlia decided to take matters into her own hands and stole more poison from the pharmacology lab. However, her ex-boyfriend, pharmacology student Doug Swallow, found out about the stolen poison and warned Wright. Hearing their conversation, Dahlia waited for Wright to leave, killed Swallow by electrocuting him, and framed Wright for the murder.

Wright's trial
During Wright's subsequent trial, his defense attorney Mia Fey, who was also Diego Armando's junior partner, managed to figure out that Dahlia had hidden the poison in the necklace. Before it could be checked for traces of poison, however, Wright, trying to protect Dahlia and not knowing that she was not the woman he had been involved with for eight months, snatched the necklace from Fey, ran from the courtroom and ate it, destroying the evidence.