Jake Marshall

"Jake Marshall"

- They shoot you in Texas for that!

Jake Marshall is a cowboy-themed witness in the murder of Bruce Goodman. He often makes references to the state of Texas, even though he is from Los Angeles.

Detective career
Jake Marshall acted as a mentor to Dick Gumshoe when he started out in the force, giving him a cactus plant that he claimed would "listen to all his problems".

Demotion

 * Main article: SL-9 Incident

On February of 2015, Jake Marshall took a case with his brother Neil Marshall, detective Angel Starr, detective Bruce Goodman and chief detectives Damon Gant and Lana Skye to track down serial killer Joe Darke. However, tragedy stuck when Darke escaped police custody during a blackout and ran into Neil and Ema Skye. Neil was found dead.

Darke was tried for Neil's death on top of his other murders and he was found guilty. After the incident, Jake was demoted to patrolman, guard of the evidence room, but Jake, alongside Starr and Goodman, thought something was wrong with the evidence.

Murder of Bruce Goodman

 * Main article: Rise from the Ashes

For the next two years, Jake tried to convince his peers and superiors to reopen the SL-9 case to find out the truth about what happened to his brother. Even though Starr supported him, Goodman stood steadfast. Finally on February 21st, 2017, the day the SL-9 case was to be closed permanently, Jake stole Goodman's ID. With his knowledge of where the security cameras were, his plan was to disguise himself as Goodman and steal the evidence to examine them himself. However, he hadn't made up his mind.

Around 5:00 PM, Jake received a call from Lana Skye, who told him Goodman had been murdered. Realizing he only had one chance to find out the truth, he put on his disguise and went inside the evidence room. By luck, Goodman's locker was open, but was empty. (The locks in the evidence room had fingerprint scans, meaning only the detective it was assigned to could open it. In this case, a plastic glove was jammed between the sensors. Jake didn't know anything about them.) Jake then went to head back out, but was stopped by officer Mike Meekins. Meekins asked for his ID, but Jake panicked and pulled out a knife, knowing his cover would be blown if he did. Meekins lunged at the knife, cut his own hand and passed out. With his white coat bloodied, Jake went to his own locker and stuffed the coat inside, but mistakenly left a sleeve out.

The next day, Jake was assigned to guard the crime scene, which was at the underground parking lot of the prosecutor's office, and ditched Goodman's ID card there. He assisted defense attorney Phoenix Wright and Lana's sister Ema Skye when they came to investigate; Lana had been accused of Goodman's murder, and Ema had hired Wright to represent her in court.

On the following day, the trial of Lana Skye began. During the trial, word came out that Meekins had been arrested for the murder of what seemed like another "Bruce Goodman" in the evidence room, and the trial was postponed. Jake let Wright and Ema into the evidence room for their investigation. When questioned where he was at 5:15 PM on February 21st, he claimed he was eating spaghetti at a local "saloon". Jake gave Wright the ID card record.

On the second day of Lana's trial, Wright brought out Jake as a witness. Having put together many of the pieces surrounding SL-9, commanded Jake to testify about his whereabouts during the incident in the evidence room. Jake tried to deny being in the evidence room, but the jacket he had left hanging exposed him. Being oblivious to the sensors on the lockers also worked against him. Thus, the "murder" in the evidence room was exposed as a fake, and more information was revealed about the SL-9 Incident.

Aftermath
After court was suspended for the day, Jake decided to turn himself in to the prosecutor's office, but not before giving Wright more information. The next day, Wright used his information in concert with other information he had gathered to prove that Gant was the real killer in the murders of both Goodman and Neil.

Jake later told Wright to make sure Billy, his cactus, got his water. Mike Meekins took over his job of guarding the evidence room.

Name

 * The last name "Marshall" is similar to the word "marshal" and is pronounced identically.


 * Marshall's motif is a play on the term "cowboy cop".

Development

 * In Jake's early character designs he had a cactus in his pocket. He also had a guitar, but the character designer was asked to take it out.


 * The reason Jake was made a cowboy was to differentiate him from Godot, who he resembled in early drafts of the script (character-wise). His possible romantic history with Lana was also a way to complete the Skye Sisters/Fey Sisters comparison, by mirroring Mia's relationship with Godot.