“Your honor, there’s a clear contradiction here!”
“Objection! I cannot begin to imagine where you’re seeing a contradiction. The witness’ testimony is… bulletproof, frankly.”
“Can’t you see? The witness claims to have seen the defendant walking down the hall half an hour before the murder… but the hotel’s records show that was their checkout day! They checked out of the hotel at 11am, but the murder occurred three hours later! They had no reason to be in that hotel, unless they knew something was going to be occurring!”
Edgeworth glared at Phoenix, his perfect prosecution being ruined by the same defense attorney that had defeated him in every other case.
“Witness, please, revise your testimony to include this information.” Edgeworth composed himself again, and the witness started.
“Of course! I checked out at 11am, that’s correct, but they still had the lunch buffet open. I decided to take advantage of this, so went in and grabbed some food, and started wandering the hotel as I ate. I was walking down the hallway and saw that man leaning against wall, glancing around!” The witness pointed sharply at the defendant.
“Don’t you see? I witness was simply wandering the hotel between lunch and my flight a few hours later.”
“Objection! He may have been wandering the hotel, but he wasn’t wandering that hallway! Right here I have a floorplan of that level. If you look at the hallway where the murder occurred… it’s a dead end! The witness wouldn’t have walked down it, because there was nothing at the end! And if the witness simply walked past, he wouldn’t have seen the defendant glancing around!”
The witness visibly jolted, and Phoenix felt the tides of the trial turn in his favor.
“Objection! While some of that may perhaps be true, it’s irrelevant to this trial! The witness saw the defendant hanging around in that dead-end hallway, and as you’ve just said yourself, there was no reason for him to be in that hallway unless he committed the murder!”
Phoenix deflated, and the witness jumped in to add salt. “Mr Edgeworth is correct! I was walking along, and saw a nice view out the window that’s at the end of the hallway in that floorplan there, so decided to go have a look. That’s when I saw the murderer, and when I left.”
Phoenix saw his chance.
“Objection! If we take one last look at this floorplan, you can see right there… a camera! Looking down the hallway! It’s programmed to take pictures every five minutes. Right here, I have the one taken just before the murder! You can clearly see the witness standing next to the window, holding his plate of food in one hand… but you can also see a knife in the other gloved hand! The very same knife found in the body!”
From across the room, a gavel slammed three times, and Phoenix sat back as the verdict came in.
Not Guilty