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English Turnabout
Transcript

Flynch
The Legal League of Attorneys' exchange, was it? Sounds like fun. Hope you're enjoying the sights. You can take it easy today. Don't worry, Prosecutor Flynch will take care of everything!

Prologue: English Turnabout is the second prologue chapter of Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Phoenix Wright and his assistant Maya Fey travel to England from Los Angeles on an exchange with the Legal League of Attorneys. However, Wright soon finds himself defending a young woman named Espella Cantabella on charges of assault and theft. The music used throughout this chapter, collectively known as the "English Turnabout Mix", is a set of orchestral arrangements of themes from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.

An assault incident[]

Bonk on the head

The scene witnessed by the patrol guard.

Inside a small freighter, a fight broke out between two women. The sounds of the struggle attracted the attention of a patrolling guard. He hurried to the scene just as one of the women fell to the floor, with the other holding a pipe.

Trial[]

In an English courthouse, Phoenix Wright and Maya Fey were waiting for a trial to begin, though Wright had not expected to stand trial. Fey wondered if the jewel thieves whose story appeared in a nearby newspaper had anything to do with the case, but Wright insisted that it should be a simple, textbook case, since they were only here on an exchange through the Legal League of Attorneys. As they were talking, a "Ms. Darklaw" at the Owl Cote School for Young Women entered the lobby with Wright's client, a student named Espella. Darklaw explained that Espella would be pleading guilty, and handed Wright the case files. Espella said little, but as Darklaw left, Espella whispered, "I'm... not a witch."

Johnny Smiles[]

There was no time to inquire further, as the trial went underway. According to Prosecutor Flynch, Espella Cantabella had entered the freight illegally and had been caught by a crew member attempting to steal a PC Badger plush doll. Cantabella had then allegedly picked up a steel pipe and knocked the crew member unconscious, only to be found and arrested by a patroling security guard, Johnny Smiles. The guard was called to the stand to testify about what he had seen. He claimed that he had seen nothing out of the ordinary other than the fight. Wright asked him for more details on his patrol, and he explained that he had started patroling at 10:20 p.m., after a show he was watching had ended.

Flynch then submitted a photo of the crime scene, which showed that one of the crates had been broken, apparently by the pipe, and another crate had been forced open. Wright confronted Smiles, asking why he had not mentioned these in his testimony. The guard testified that he was not very good with the light controls, so the lights had been off save for an emergency light. He also mentioned that he had his "trusty pocket torch", which was submitted as evidence, covered in his chocolate-covered fingerprints. Smiles continued, saying that he had seen Cantabella standing right in front of the crew member during the final blow. However, this contradicted the medical report, which stated that the victim had suffered a blow to the back of the head.

Wright asserted that the witness was unreliable, and that his client was innocent. That was when Smiles, unwilling to stand for this blemish to his long, six-month career, submitted his "secret weapon", which he had even hidden from the prosecution. After apprehending Cantabella, Smiles had confiscated a tag that she had apparently torn off of one of the PC Badger plushies. At this point, Flynch reminded Wright that his client had pleaded guilty, but Wright replied that he had no intention of backing down. The judge declared a 15-minute recess to set up Flynch's second witness.

Olivia Aldente[]

London newspaper article

Jewel thieves in London.

During the recess, Wright and Fey found Darklaw reading the newspaper that Fey had been reading before. Darklaw saw them and told Wright that it was in Cantabella's best interests for the trial to be over quickly. Wright kept this in mind going back into the trial, but was determined to save his client from false charges. The second witness was the victim, Olivia Aldente, who testified that she had discovered the defendant in the cargo hold at 10:00 p.m. She described the fight that followed, and claimed that Cantabella had swung the pipe at her. Flynch then submitted a photo showing the fingerprints on the pipe, which belonged to Cantabella.

Wright looked at the photo and realized that the positioning of the fingerprints did not fit with the assumption that Cantabella had swung the pipe overhead. Aldente claimed that the defendant had held the pipe backhanded, but Wright found it hard to believe that Cantabella could hit someone taller than her on the back of the head, holding the pipe like that. Wright asserted that Cantabella had, in fact, caught the pipe trying to defend herself from an assailant wearing gloves. Smiles could not have been the culprit, since he had left fingerprints on his flashlight. Therefore, Aldente, who wore gloves as part of her work outfit, was the assailant.

Flynch insisted that Cantabella was guilty of attempted theft, regardless of Wright's argument. Aldente testified that she had indeed wrestled one of the plushies back from Cantabella, ripping off one of its legs in the process, and had then given it to the police. However, when the toy was submitted as evidence, Wright noticed that the tag was still on it, a contradiction with Smiles's claim about the tag having been ripped off. Wright asserted that Aldente had swapped the plushie that she had retrieved from Cantabella with the one with the missing leg. Aldente suggested that Smiles had lied about the tag, but all that was needed to verify its authenticity was to check it for the defendant's fingerprints.

Wright then asked Flynch whether the police had found any plushie without a tag. Flynch admitted that the cargo hold had not been searched very thoroughly, so Wright requested another, more thorough search, asserting that perhaps the plushie in question was still hidden there. Aldente suddenly panicked and demanded that they not go through with the search. It was then that Wright realized that the plushie had something very important inside: a jewel from the heist mentioned in the papers. Indeed, a police search found the plushie and cut it open to find a jewel inside. Moreover, the tag indeed had Cantabella's fingerprints.

Aldente had a breakdown and admitted that she was a member of the thieves who had hidden the jewels inside the plushies. Her job was to make sure these toys and their contents successfully made it out of London. Aldente did not know who had hit her, but it was evident that Cantabella was innocent. She was cleared of all charges while Flynch lost his glasses.

Into the Story

The Historia Labyrinthia glows again.

Darklaw thanked Wright, saying that she would have asked for an acquittal if she had known that he could do it. Cantabella was holding a large book, and Fey tried to ask her about it, but Darklaw replied that she was shy and liked reading books. As Darklaw and Cantabella left, Fey wondered who had hit Aldente. They decided to leave as well, but then Fey noticed that Cantabella had dropped her book. As she looked inside, however, the book turned by itself to a picture containing the two of them in a medieval town. Suddenly, there was a flash, and Wright and Fey disappeared, with the book falling to the floor.

References to other cases[]

References to popular culture[]

  • In an optional pressed statement, Johnny Smiles tells the court, "When my smiley sense starts tingling, it means there's a crime taking place." This is a reference to the comic book superhero Spider-Man, who has a sixth sense that alerts him to incoming threats as one of his superpowers; the character normally utters "my spidey sense is tingling" while this is happening.
  • Smiles at one point during the trial refers to Cantabella as "Goldilocks", who is a blonde female character from the fairy tale "Goldilocks and the Three Bears".

Notes[]

  • This is the only Ace Attorney "tutorial chapter" to date to include a "Reminiscing"-style theme right after the true culprit breaks down.
  • Every instance of the word "witness's" is spelled as "witness'", following the grammar rule variant of denoting possession by using a single apostrophe if the word ends in 's'.

Errors[]

  • When Wright finishes explaining the contradiction in Aldente's first testimony, the judge says, "How come this contradiction was not brought to light before!" The exclamation mark should instead be a question mark, as the sentence is a question.

Other languages[]

  • Dutch - Voor het eerst in Engeland (lit. “In England for the first time”)
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