Objection! Justice for all!

Recently, I had the not-so-pleasurable experience of sitting on the other side of a desk in the police station. Not because I’d done wrong, but because I felt I’d been wronged. I felt like an outsider as I sat on a chair waiting to give my story, and it seemed a far cry from the idea of anything I had apprehended. I’d lived through the eyes of detective Cole Phelps, and had experienced first-hand what it was like to have the to-and-fro of serious questions and allegations. This would be different, wouldn’t it?

I entered the box room and took a seat. My mother was with me. I was safe here. The police were here to make it all better. The first police officer I spoke to seemed reasonably understanding, and listened to me without judgement. It was not her area of expertise, so I had the delight of waiting another twenty minutes to be introduced to someone who could help. I’m not a fan of judging by first impressions, and I avoid it usually at all costs. In any case, this woman seemed fierce. She started firing questions at me, fast and hard, and before long I felt more like the perpetrator than the victim.

I felt more like the perpetrator than the victim.

“You will be ripped to shreds.” The words she left me with made me not only doubt myself and my good intentions, but put the notion into my head that these people I had considered to be on my side were not in fact, for me, but against me. It was as though the crime I had endured I had asked for, and there were in fact no benefits to reporting my case. As I sat there in floods of tears, she tried to backtrack and explain that the prosecution would have ripped my statement to shreds and slaughtered me on the stand until I felt worthless. “I was a defense lawyer before I joined the police; I know how harsh the law truly is, and you don’t have a leg to stand on…”

The first time I heard the term “Justice for All” was when I started playing the critically acclaimed Phoenix Wright game series for the Nintendo DS. I believed in these characters in a huge way. They made me laugh, they made me smile, and they made me see a whole different side to the judicial system. As exaggerated as these characters were, to me they seemed believable. Upon completing Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations, my eyes were opened to what I felt was a whole new promise of a world where detectives like Gumshoe, defence lawyers like Phoenix Wright, and prosecutors like Miles Edgeworth solved crime and fought for justice together. The harsh reality of it, although there are some shades of truth surrounding the core concept of the Japanese legal system, is that in society today in the UK, the law tells a completely different story.

There’s no such thing as a Phoenix Wright in this day and age.

I left the police station feeling let down, and upon telling the few friends who knew the situation of the outcome, I decided there and then that I was going to give up on the idea of a world where justice is for everyone. There’s no such thing as a Phoenix Wright in this day and age. He was my hero back then. He fought for the truth in every bizarre scenario. There are no bumbling detectives that resemble Dick Gumshoe, and it’s unlikely you’ll ever meet an assistant like Maya Fey.

This recent scenario takes me back many years, to the ripe age of eighteen, in which I was in an unlikely situation involving a hooded youth and a knife. I was lucky in that it’s possible that the offender who waved such an object in my direction had a conscience, and I managed to get away unscathed. It didn’t stop me going to the police to report the incident, but without a high quality CCTV video image or a detailed description, they failed to reach any outcome, and the aforementioned youth probably got away scot-free. As I had sat there with the police officer looking through hundreds of photos of similar looking criminals, I realised I had no hope whatsoever of getting justice for myself, or anyone else who may find themselves in my shoes one day.

The disappointing reality is that you are more likely to meet Franziska Von Karma than Phoenix Wright. As for me, well, I’ve given up my desire to become a lawyer, and I’ve lost confidence that the police force will be behind me should I find myself in an unforgiving similar scenario. For now, I’m just going to bury my head in a Phoenix Wright game, and hope that one day, justice will be for all.