Jake Marshall

"Jake Marshall"

- They shoot you in Texas for that!

Jake Marshall was a cowboy-obsessed patrol officer with the Los Angeles Police Department when Bruce Goodman was murdered. He often makes references to the state of Texas, even though he is actually from Los Angeles.

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

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.

Jake had a laid-back attitude to his duties as a guard. He was supposed to go inside the evidence room to check it three times a day, but stated that it was "not his style" and actually only visited the room once a month to "pay [his] respects".

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. When the trial resumed 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.

During Miles Edgeworth's investigation into a kidnapping at Gatewater Land, he came across a cactus with a commemorative plaque stating that it was donated by the police force. Edgeworth remembered seeing a cactus "farm" somewhere in the police station, indicating that this was the method used by the police to dispose of Jake's cacti.

Personality
Jake Marshall is obsessed with the wild west. He dresses in a poncho and speaks like a stereotypical cowboy. He also tends to be calm and not easily flustered, although he deeply misses his brother. His second favorite food is Angel Starr's Salisbury steak lunch, his favorite being spaghetti from his local joint.

Name

 * The kanji in his Japanese surname "Zaimon" (罪門) mean "sin" and "gate". The development team claim that it fits well with Gant's Japanese name.


 * "Marshall" is an English and Scottish surname. Originally it was meant as either a status surname for someone in charge of the horses belonging to a royal household, or as an occupational surname for someone who looked after horses or was responsible for the custody of prisoners. This does fit with Jake Marshall's character, since cowboys are usually associated with horses and his job as a police officer involves detaining criminals. It is also similar to the word "marshal" and is pronounced identically.


 * Marshall's name, personality and character design are a play on the term "cowboy cop".


 * "Jake Marshall" and "Neil Marshall" could also be plays on "fake marshal" and "real marshal" respectively.
 * His name may have been inspired by James W. Marshall, the American mill worker who first discovered gold in what would become the 1848 California Gold Rush. Jake Marshall makes frequent references to gold stakes, prospectors and the like.

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.


 * Jake was given a cowboy persona in order to differentiate him from Godot as, personality-wise, they resembled each other in early drafts of the script.


 * Dialogue in Rise from the Ashes indicates that there could have been a romantic relationship between Jake Marshall and Lana Skye in the past. The hinted romantic relationship between Lana and Jake was in order to complete the Skye sisters/Fey sisters comparison, by mirroring Mia Fey's relationship with Diego Armando.


 * The knife Mike Meekins bleeds on is the same one that Jake can often be seen using to shave off stray hairs.


 * Although he is supposed to be a Texas cowboy, Marshall says a lot of words in foreign languages, such as: "bambina" (Italian for "girl" or "baby", possibly a reference to Italian spaghetti Westerns) and "hombre" (Spanish for "man", possibly because Texas is on the border with Mexico).