Dustin Prince

Dustin Prince was a police officer at the Los Angeles police department who lost his life during a date with fellow police officer Maggey Byrde.

Fraternizing in the force
Prince dated Maggey Byrde for about six months prior to his death at the hands of Richard Wellington. Byrde and Prince had initially met at a training camp for cops and hit it off.

Death

 * Main article: The Lost Turnabout

On his 30th birthday, right after his shift, Prince went on a date with Byrde to Exposé Park, near the police headquarters. Byrde gave him a yellow baseball glove to thank him for covering one of her night shifts. During the date, Byrde found a cell phone. The owner, Wellington, soon called the phone, and Byrde and Wellington agreed to meet at 6 p.m. for him to retrieve his phone.

However, Wellington saw that Byrde was with a police officer, Prince, who was still in uniform. Wellington had connections to con artists, and he panicked, thinking that Prince had seen the numbers of con artists on his phone. Wellington pushed Prince off a ledge, breaking his neck and killing him.

Wellington took Prince's right hand and wrote Byrde's name with it, unwittingly misspelling it as "Maggie". Byrde was put on trial for the murder, and Wellington was set up as a witness.

Byrde's lawyer, Phoenix Wright, found contradictions in the way the crime scene had been set up. The message was written with his right hand; Prince was left-handed. In addition, Byrde's first name was spelled "Maggey". Wellington was eventually called to the stand, and then Wright was able to indict him as the real killer.

Personality
Not much is known about Prince's personality. The only things that are really known about him were his love of baseball, his left-handedness, and that he really liked the color yellow.

Name

 * His Japanese name, "Machio Mamoru" (町尾守), is based on the phrase machi wo mamoru  meaning "protect the town". This likely a reference to his profession as a police officer.


 * "Dustin Prince" is a play on "dusting [for finger]prints".

Note
Dustin Prince is one of only two characters in the entire Ace Attorney series whose birthday is known, due to the fact that he was killed on his birthday. The other is a relative of one of Shi-Long Lang's subordinates.

Prince is also, along with Cindy Stone and Romein LeTouse, the only victims killed on impulse by people who they did not personally know.