Kristoph Gavin

Kristoph Gavin was a renowned defense attorney and Apollo Justice's boss and mentor. He was often called "the coolest defense in the West", referring to his ability to keep his cool during a trial. He made a point of striving for perfection in all areas of life, particularly in court, where he considered the law and evidence to be absolutes upon which all judgments should be made.

Kristoph has a younger brother, Klavier, who is a prosecutor. Kristoph was a special witness for the cases Turnabout Trump and Turnabout Succession.

The forgery

 * Main article: Turnabout Succession

In 2019, Kristoph Gavin met a magician named Zak Gramarye and offered to become his lawyer in the murder trial of Magnifi Gramarye. However, Gavin was only after the fame, so he decided to ensure his victory by asking a forger, Vera Misham, to make a page that looked like it came from the victim's diary to implicate Valant Gramarye as the murderer. He left behind a letter with a postage stamp on it, as well as a bottle of Ariadoney nail polish, which were both contaminated with a powerful poison called atroquinine, so that the Mishams would not survive to talk about Gavin's involvement with them. He had noticed that Vera had a habit of biting her nails whenever she was nervous, so he told her that the nail polish was a magic charm.

Zak Gramarye challenged Gavin in a game of poker to see if he was trustworthy. Gavin lost the game and Gramarye rejected him as his attorney, instead hiring Phoenix Wright. Furious with this outcome, Gavin decided to plant the evidence he forged on Phoenix to ruin both him and his new defendant. He then told his younger brother Klavier Gavin about the forgery prior to the trial, and Klavier used this information to devise a trap to expose the forgery. The trap succeeded, and Wright was subsequently disbarred after the trial.

However, Gramarye vanished from the courtroom before the verdict could be read, which drove Gavin to watch everyone involved with the case: the Mishams, Wright, and Spark Brushel, in fear that Gramarye would reappear to one of them and expose Gavin's involvement in the forgery. To this end, he befriended Wright in an effort to prevent himself from being suspected, but the relationship was never very intimate. Meanwhile, Wright conducted investigations of his own in preparation for events to follow.

Fall from grace

 * Main article: Turnabout Trump

Seven years later, Zak Gramarye reappeared to Phoenix under the name "Shadi Smith", and Gavin saw his chance to kill Gramarye before he could reveal Gavin's role as his original attorney. He hid in a secret tunnel behind a cabinet in the basement of the Borscht Bowl Club, where Wright and Gramarye were playing poker, and waited for an opening in which he could attack Gramarye with a grape juice bottle. Wright was placed on trial for the murder, and he requested that Gavin call upon one of his new proteges, Apollo Justice, to defend him in court. Although Gavin tried to persuade Justice into implicating a witness and then Wright as the killer, Wright guided Justice into implicating Gavin as the real killer.

Final blow

 * Main article: Turnabout Succession

About six months later, Drew Misham died of atroquinine poisoning, and his daughter Vera was accused of committing the murder. Phoenix Wright convinced the judicial system to use this case to test the Jurist System. With Apollo Justice and Klavier Gavin as the defense and prosecution, respectively, the trial traced the poison to the stamp that Kristoph poisoned seven years before. Meanwhile, Wright built a program called the Mason System to guide the jury through the investigations he conducted for the past seven years, which revealed that Gavin poisoned the stamp and the nail polish. Justice was also informed of these events.

Kristoph Gavin was then summoned as a special witness. He convinced the judge to reject all of Phoenix Wright's evidence and claims, citing Wright's lack of authority as well as the lack of any solid evidence implicating Gavin as the killer. In a normal court, he would have been cleared of all charges due to lack of concrete evidence and/or testimony. However, he forgot that this trial was being watched by a jury, the forerunners and testers of the Jurist System. Upon being informed about the Jurist System being implemented, which had the power to declare an innocent verdict regardless of solid evidence, he flew into a rage, calling the jurors "ignorant swine" and "emotional [...] riff-raff" unfit for passing judgment in a court of law, which he claimed was absolute. However, the judge and Klavier dismissed his statements, citing the continual evolution of law over the years; the law was always improving, but it was never perfect or absolute. Klavier added that the justice system did not need Kristoph anymore. When the trial concluded, the jury unanimously declared an innocent verdict for Vera Misham, and Gavin could do nothing about it but laugh.

Name origin
Kristoph Gavin's Japanese given name, Kirihito (霧人), reads "hitokiri" (人霧) when read backwards. "Hitokiri" means "killer".