- 9:45 a.m.
Athena Cykes had hardly slept on the night before the trial, but she was ready. Klavier Gavin appeared with the audio analysis findings. The lab had found signs of overdubbing on the tape recording, and it was being analyzed further to extract the original recording. Apollo Justice suddenly noticed the presence of eavesdroppers. He and Gavin figured that Myriam Scuttlebutt, Robin Newman and Hugh O'Conner were spying on them, and Gavin promised to catch them before they could run away. Gavin wished the two defense lawyers luck for the trial.
Trial[]
- 10:00 a.m.
The trial began with O'Conner called as a witness, as expected. He testified to seeing Woods pulling the exercise mat from behind the stage before the mock trial. He claimed to have seen all this from a vantage point between the stage and maintenance area. Cykes countered that there was a construction screen beside the stage, which had been placed while the stage was being set up. The screen would have blocked O'Conner's view of the stage. In fact, the only way for O'Conner to see what Woods was allegedly doing was if he were near the back of the stage himself, where Woods would have seen him.
Blackquill then revealed O'Conner's secret: he was working part-time as a construction worker and he was operating a crane on the stage on the night of the murder. O'Conner would have been able to see Woods from inside the crane. One of Scuttlebutt's photos had captured the crane operator, who wore a band around his neck that appeared prominent enough to be identified. O'Conner reluctantly unzipped his school uniform collar, revealing the neckband and admitting to being the crane operator. The judge pointed out that one had to be at least twenty years old to operate a crane. Against O'Conner's pleas, Blackquill dropped another bombshell: O'Conner was really twenty-five years old, having taken a seven-year break from school.
Cykes conjectured that O'Conner had used the crane to move the victim's body. However, O'Conner revealed his injured left hand, saying that the crane required two hands to operate, so he could not have used it at the time of the mock trial. As long as the prosecution's argument about the mat held, the defense had no case. With this in mind, Cykes posed an alternative theory: the body had been carried down the wire between the art room and the stage using the school banner.
Blackquill pointed out that the blood-splattered pottery in the art room was nowhere near the winch. To his surprise, however, the blood had not been tested, and when a test was conducted, the results showed that the blood belonged to O'Conner, not Courte. Blackquill then revealed another of O'Conner's secrets: he had sustained his hand injury when he tried to peek at the script submitted by Scuttlebutt, which had been booby trapped with a spring-loaded razor.
Blackquill returned to Cykes's proposed theory, and he said that it was impossible because the banner would have knocked over the statues. Cykes asserted that that was exactly what had happened. Everybody realized that this meant that all this had to have taken place during the mock trial. Under intense pressure from both sides of the bench, O'Conner came clean about lying about seeing the body. Still, Blackquill noted that Woods was the only one at that time who could move around freely, since she was in charge of the audio. Far from being one of three possible suspects, she was now the only possible suspect.
Suddenly, O'Conner snapped and declared himself the real killer. He claimed that he had not taken part in the mock trial, but used a body double instead, allowing him to move freely around the school and move the body. As everyone began to question O'Conner's sanity, he pleaded with Cykes to cross-examine him with the Mood Matrix. Cykes took her only shot to stay in the game, and she found that O'Conner was inexplicably overloaded with happiness. She realized that, contrary to what O'Conner had told her yesterday, he really cared about Woods and was happy to lie to cover for her, to the point that it overshadowed all of his other emotions.
Blackquill jested that Cykes had merely revealed the obvious, but O'Conner insisted that Cykes try to disprove his body double claim. Cykes noticed that the feeling of happiness throughout O'Conner's testimony disappeared when he said that his body double was the one who had almost lost. O'Conner explained that he had slipped out during the pre-trial speech and returned to replace his body double just before the verdict, which was why he did not feel happiness when mentioning it. Only someone on the left balcony could have seen him, but he claimed that it was empty as Courte was already dead by then. Cykes pointed out that according to the lecture plan, this was Means's seat, not Courte's; O'Conner should have seen Means in his seat.
Cykes had O'Conner testify more about his escape. Cykes noticed powerful sadness and fear when he claimed that he had escaped through the empty audio control room. He knew that he had made a mistake with this claim, since it would once again throw suspicion onto Woods. This demonstrated even further that O'Conner was desperately trying to protect Woods.
O'Conner then admitted that he was not a genius. He had learned a few days prior that his parents had been bribing the teachers for his perfect scores. Woods had seen him while he was confronting his parents about the bribery. O'Conner had only given his damning testimony against Woods because he believed that it would somehow help her case.
O'Conner believed that he could never face Woods again because of the revelation that he was a fake. However, Cykes realized that his neckband was his proof of friendship. She had noticed that O'Conner would touch his neck when pressured. Similarly, Newman would touch her arm, and Woods would touch her wrist. Woods and Newman called out to him and revealed that they were still wearing their bands.
Realizing that their friendship had never been in doubt, O'Conner burst into tears and finally recanted almost his entire testimony. However, he maintained that Means's seat had been empty the whole time he was at the defense's bench. Means's speech must have been pre-recorded. O'Conner also revealed that the recording with Woods's voice on it had been given to him by Means, who asked him to hand it to the police. Cykes realized that Means's alibi was no longer solid and requested that Means testify.
As Means was summoned to the stand, the court went through the pre-trial speech, and Cykes noticed a contradiction. Means's speech referred to a "white Lady of Justice", but the statue in the lecture hall was gold. There was a white Lady Justice statue, but Courte had broken it. Means tried to brush this off as a mistake, but Cykes noticed something else. Means's speech lasted for 10 minutes and 35 seconds, which happened to be the same amount of white noise on the tape recording of Woods's voice. Cykes asserted that the original recording on the tape contained Means's pre-recorded speech.
Means admitted to pre-recording his speech, but he claimed that it had been part of a devious plan by Woods to evade suspicion on her. He claimed that Woods had asked him to make the pre-recorded speech and meet her in the audio room, and then she had threatened him into taking her case. Means testified that he had complied because he approved of her using any means necessary to achieve her ends, and because it was the humane thing to do. Cykes countered that Means had submitted evidence incriminating Woods to the police, which made no sense if he was really trying to defend her.
Aristotle Means transformed into a harsher, stricter lecturer personality. He claimed that he had left school by the time of the murder, but Newman contradicted him, saying that he had offered to finish the Phoenix Wright statue for her. Means then testified that he had started working on the Wright statue at 7 p.m. and had finished by 8:30. He claimed that he had been so focused on the statue that he had not gone anywhere else. Cykes pressed him on this but, finding no concrete reason to doubt it, she conceded this point.
Cykes realized that the murder had actually occurred on the stage, and she presented the bloodstained school banner to prove it. Scuttlebutt's photo showed the Gavinners banner overlapping the school banner, and thus it had soaked up most of the blood. The killer had then brought the Gavinners banner to the art room via the wire and spread it over the floor, in order to fabricate the scene of the murder, and later burned the banner in the school incinerator, explaining the burnt fragments bearing the Gavinners logo that Scuttlebutt had found. Cykes identified the statue in Woods's photo as the white Lady Justice statue. She asserted that the killer had used the school banner and the wire to make the sculpture crash into the other two statues, in order to draw attention to the murder and establish his alibi.
However, Means had one final defense. The next day, no one had seen the body until Cykes had discovered it that afternoon, so where had it gone until then? Means went further and declared that Cykes was not only failing Woods, but had almost gotten O'Conner convicted of the crime. Cykes froze and began to relive a past trauma, but Newman, O'Conner and Woods reminded her of all the good that she had done for them, rendering the false charges meaningless by comparison. Justice told Cykes that the truth would always triumph over people like Means, and Blackquill reminded her of someone that she was trying to save. Cykes thanked everyone and renewed her argumentative assault.
Cykes reviewed the case at hand and remembered that she had never found any fragments of the Wright statue. So Means must have posed the body as the Wright statue. No one would have been the wiser because both statues had been covered with tarps. To prove this, Cykes proposed that she use her own body and a cloth to construct a facsimile of the concealed statue.
Cykes had Justice tie her hands behind her head to mimic Wright's signature spiky hair. She then tried using the arrow to produce Wright's pointing arm, but it was too short. However, Means's staff, which turned out to be a spear, did the job; Scuttlebutt's photo proved that Means had his staff on hand during the time of the murder, meaning that he had the means to murder Courte on the stage. All they needed to do was test Means's staff for blood to prove that it was the murder weapon. Cornered, Aristotle Means tried to bargain with the gallery, but he eventually fell in defeat, fracturing his teeth in the process.
Surely enough, blood was found on Means's staff, and Blackquill read out the disgraced teacher's confession. Means had murdered Courte after she confronted him over the bribes he was taking. He, like Newman, had learned of the mock trial script using the victim's notes. The notebook page with O'Conner's name on it had belonged to Means, who had a similar planner. The outcome of the trial left the judge surprised, but he nonetheless proceeded to declare Juniper Woods not guilty and wished her the best of luck of becoming a judge and helping to bring the dark age of the law to an end.
In the defendant lobby, Athena and Justice congratulated Juniper on her verdict, who thanked them in return and immediately began showing signs of admiration for Apollo. Phoenix and Trucy Wright appeared and said that, in memory of Constance Courte, the Themis Legal Academy school festival was being extended for one more day.
Oct. 27[]
Juniper Woods joined Klavier Gavin on stage for a performance of "The Guitar's Serenade". Woods then met Phoenix Wright, Athena Cykes, Apollo Justice, Robin Newman and Hugh O'Conner in the Lecture Hall. Newman declared that, although she had really wanted to be an artist rather than a prosecutor, Cykes had inspired her to go through with law school. Unbeknownst to Cykes, the mock trial had been redone, and O'Conner had won and had already finished his seminar with Wright. Cykes remembered that O'Conner was going to confess something to Juniper, but it turned out that he had planned to admit that he was not really a genius and that he was really twenty-five years old.
O'Conner asked Woods if they could be best friends again like before. Woods agreed and added that everyone - Newman, O'Conner, and even Myriam Scuttlebutt, who was hiding in a box nearby - would be needed to help return the courts to seeking only the truth. Justice remarked that the heartwarming scene reminded him of his best friend, and that he would be meeting him in the near future.