While the Ace Attorney games are known for primarily for over the top cases, Fintan Monaghan has convincingly argued that it can also be seen as a parody and critique of the Japanese justice system:
If you are charged with a crime in Japan and brought to trial, statistics show that there is a 99 percent chance that you will be convicted. This alarming statistic reveals the highly dysfunctional legal system from which the Ace Attorney series clearly takes its inspiration; a system where even a victim of false allegations finds it impossible to escape conviction. Phoenix Wright, the eponymous lawyer of the popular Capcom games, constantly battles seemingly impossible odds as he fights to defend his falsely accused clients. While the fantastical anime nature of the games gives rise to outlandish courtroom antics and bizarre scenarios, the core concept of a lopsided legal system weighted against the accused is an exaggerated parody of Japanese society and their courts.
In effect, the games have a presumption of guilt and a requirement for decisive proof of another's guilt to get a verdict of not guilty. To achieve that mighty task, the virtues praised most directly by the series are seeking truth and believing. The truth-seeking sometimes results in the prosecution and defense effectively teaming up to figure out what really happened. That outcome seems odd, but given the need to effectively prove someone else did it, the defense attorneys often effectively become prosecutors in their own right. Thus I'd say that in the first three games the prosecutors and police are parodied but idea that even the guilty deserve a competent defense isn't addressed.
However, I'd argue that Apollo Justice, the fourth game in the series, does the best job of the ones I've played at actually getting at the importance of legal council. In the second case, your client is an outright mobster who obnoxiously tries to establish his gangster cred with almost every thing he says. There's also a few points where a sympathetic character plays some sketchy hardball in a way that seeks the truth by a fairly twisty path. Finally, the last case involves a possible reform to the judicial system that would introduce juries who would not be bound by the decisive evidence standard. Now, in both cases, our hero is still first and foremost concerned with finding the truth rather than ensuring the client's defense. Nonetheless, I think this valuably adds to the picture in the prior three games which instead focused on problems of overreach, fraud, and by the police and prosecution.
Even though they do just scratch the surface, I think the games all should be commended for taking on a real issue. And to be clear, while our conviction rate is lower, some of the problems do apply in the U.S. as well. See Ta-Nehisi Coates on Texas "justice":
In 2000, an investigation by The Chicago Tribune found that almost one-third of court-appointed defense lawyers in capital cases in Texas had, at some point, been publicly sanctioned by the state’s trial board. The Tribune uncovered cases of lawyers falling asleep at trials, engaging in extortion and assaulting teenage girls. Prosecutors and police were found concealing evidence or worse. In 1980, Cesar Fierro received the death penalty on the strength of a confession secured after an El Paso sheriff colluded with police across the border in Juárez, Mexico, who arrested Fierro’s parents and threatened to attach an electric generator to his stepfather’s genitals. Fierro is still on death row.
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