Ace Attorney 2012

The court system, overburdened by the massive number of crimes being committed, introduces a radical new method for settling cases more quickly: the bench trial system. Both prosecution and defense face each other in open court and have three days to make their case before the judge renders a verdict.

Phoenix Wright, a rookie defense attorney, has just won his first case by defending his friend Larry Butz from a false charge of murder with assistance from his mentor, veteran attorney Mia Fey. Butz gives Mia a statue of The Thinker as thanks. Wright is then thrust into another major case when Mia is bludgeoned to death in her office with the statue, and her younger sister Maya, a Spirit medium, is accused of it based on a dying note from Mia. Facing off against his childhood friend Miles Edgeworth, Wright manages to prove that Mia was murdered by photojournalist Redd White, and Maya is declared not guilty. After the case, Wright reveals to Maya, who gets hired as his assistant, that he decided to become an attorney after a childhood incident where he was accused of stealing money and Miles and Butz defended him.

Soon after, Wright learns that Miles has been arrested for the murder of attorney Robert Hammond. Wright convinces Miles to accept him as his defense attorney and learns that he will be facing off against Miles’s mentor, Manfred von Karma, a vicious prosecutor with a perfect record. Despite von Karma’s underhanded tactics, Wright is able to deduce that Hammond was actually murdered by Yanni Yogi. Yogi was involved fifteen years prior in the “DL-6” case, concerning the death of Gregory Edgeworth, Miles’s father, who was shot dead in the courtroom’s evidence storage. Yogi, then a court bailiff, was accused of the murder after he discovered Gregory allegedly tampering with a gun listed as evidence in a case against von Karma. Hammond coerced him into pleading not guilty by reason of insanity, and he was released. The case destroyed Yogi’s life, causing his wife to commit suicide and leaving him a broken old man. He claims to have received a package with a gun urging him to take revenge on Hammond and Miles. After Yogi’s confession, Miles claims that he murdered his father, sparking a new investigation into the DL-6 case.

Wright proves that Miles is innocent of his father’s murder and uncovers evidence that von Karma was the one who murdered Gregory after having committed perjury. However, he cannot prove it as the gun Gregory was believed to have tampered with and was killed with has gone missing. While thinking of a plan, Wright accidentally breaks the statue of The Thinker, finding hidden notes written by Mia on the DL-6 case and a bag with the bullet that killed Gregory, revealed to be the reason why she was killed. These pieces of evidence are used to incriminate von Karma, who suffers a nervous breakdown in court and is arrested for murder and conspiracy, resulting in the judge acquitting Miles of all charges.

Wright swears to help clear Yogi’s name, and he and Miles reconcile. Butz later reveals that he was the one who stole the money that Wright was accused of stealing when they were children. Maya takes a leave of absence so she can return home for further training as a medium, while Miles and Wright continue their careers as prosecutor and defense attorney, but this time as friendly rivals rather than enemies.