Miles Edgeworth

Prosecuting people and beating Phoenix Wright at his own game.

I also have a deathly fear of earthquakes.

NOTE: THIS BIOGRAPHY MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS TO MY LIFE! IT'S ALSO WRITTEN IN 3RD PERSON BECAUSE IT CAME OUT STRAIGHT FROM MY BOOK!

BACKGROUND:
Phoenix, Edgeworth, and Larry were friends in the 4th grade after Edgeworth defended Phoenix for the false charge of stealing his lunch money. At the time, Edgeworth wanted to be a defense attorney like his father, Gregory Edgeworth. However, this all changed after Gregory's murder, which remained officially unsolved and filed as DL-6. The murder took place following an earthquake in which Edgeworth was trapped in an elevator with his father and the court bailiff Yanni Yogi. Edgeworth eventually passed out from oxygen deprivation, and, when he awoke, his father had been murdered. From Edgeworth's perspective, the obvious murderer was Yanni Yogi, but he was released thanks to the efforts of a defense attorney. After this, Edgeworth vowed to become a prosecuting attorney instead, believing that because he could never prove innocence or guilt, it was better to ensure every defendant was declared guilty.

DL-6 would have far-reaching effects. The police, still unable to find the true murderer, had turned to spirit medium Misty Fey, the mother of Mia and Maya Fey, and asked her to channel the spirit of Gregory Edgeworth. Gregory identified his killer as Yanni Yogi. After Yogi was released and found innocent, Misty was betrayed to the press by attorney Marvin Grossberg, who himself would later be blackmailed into silence by Bluecorp president Redd White. Misty, in shame, left Kurain village and her two children, never to be heard from again. When an adult Mia Fey investigated the trail that led to White, White murdered her to keep her from revealing his secrets.

After Gregory's murder, Edgeworth was taken in by Manfred von Karma, who became his mentor. Miles grew up with von Karma's daughter Franziska, who despite being several years his junior referred to Miles as her "younger brother". von Karma was a feared prosecutor with a perfect case record of guilty verdicts. The only penalty he had ever received came about in a case with Gregory Edgeworth, in what would be Gregory's final case before his murder.

After DL-6, Edgeworth cut off all contact with Phoenix. He became a prosecutor at the age of 20; his first case was against then-rookie attorney Mia Fey. While this case ended due to the death of the defendant, all of Edgeworth's subsequent cases resulted in perfect guilty verdicts. His reputation as "the demon prosecutor" led Phoenix to decide to become a defense attorney in order to force Edgeworth to deal with him in court.

PHOENIX WRIGHT: ACE ATTORNEY:
Edgeworth first appears in the games as a prosecutor in the second case of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Turnabout Sisters, in which he tries to get Maya Fey and later Phoenix himself found guilty for the murder of Mia Fey. Edgeworth ultimately lost his case against Phoenix, the first loss of his career. This loss deeply affected Edgeworth, and Detective Dick Gumshoe told Phoenix that he would spend hours simply saying the name "Wright" in shock.

Edgeworth's losing streak continued in the third case, Turnabout Samurai, in which he revealed a flash of his old personality by actually helping Phoenix win the case when he realized that Dee Vasquez, the prosecution's star witness, was actually guilty of the crime instead of the defendant. After the case, he told Phoenix to never speak to him again.

This all changed when Edgeworth himself was framed for the murder of defense attorney Robert Hammond during Turnabout Goodbyes, the man who helped Yanni Yogi beat his earlier murder charge. Though the case appeared hopeless, Edgeworth relented and allowed Phoenix to represent him in court. The prosecuting attorney was Manfred von Karma, who showed no mercy despite being Edgeworth's mentor and surrogate father.

Over the course of this case, Edgeworth began to treat a recurring nightmare in which he murdered his father far more seriously. He came to believe that he himself was the criminal of DL-6, having thrown a pistol in the elevator shaft to get his father and Yanni Yogi to stop fighting. Despite the spirit of Gregory Edgeworth stating that Yogi was the culprit, Edgeworth came to believe that his father's ghost had lied to protect him.

The Hammond case was resolved on the same day as the statute of limitations on DL-6 was about to run out. It was proven that Yanni Yogi himself was the perpetrator, seeking revenge against Hammond and Edgeworth for ruining his life. However, Phoenix had discovered during the investigation that the entire plan was devised by Manfred von Karma, who quickly destroyed the evidence against him. Just as Edgeworth was declared innocent of Hammond's murder, he confessed to being the criminal of DL-6.

Phoenix took up his defense yet again, managing to piece together the true events of DL-6. He determined that while the pistol Edgeworth had thrown had in fact gone off, the shot did not hit Gregory Edgeworth, but instead hit Manfred von Karma in the shoulder. von Karma, still reeling from the penalty dealt to his record and now the physical injury, wanted revenge. As the elevator doors opened, he picked up the pistol and shot Gregory Edgeworth in the heart. He later engineered the plot against Edgeworth in order to exact revenge against him for the shot to the shoulder. This revelation cleared Edgeworth of DL-6.

In Rise from the Ashes, the fifth case added for the DS release of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Edgeworth found himself prosecuting Chief Prosecutor Lana Skye, a woman he had previously looked up to, for the murder of Detective Bruce Goodman. Central to the case was the previously "solved" murder case SL-9, in which Joe Darke had been convicted of the murder of prosecutor Neil Marshall. Suspicions over the evidence were raised by the detectives in the case; one was fired and another demoted. The third, Bruce Goodman, was the only one not punished. Edgeworth eventually discovered that the case against Darke had been won using falsified evidence prepared by Skye and Police Chief Damon Gant. The guilt of convicting an innocent man, along with the pressure on him from having been prosecuted for two murders, weighed so heavily on Edgeworth that even after Phoenix proved Gant was the culprit in the murders of Neil Marshall and Bruce Goodman, Edgeworth left the prosecutor's office entirely, leaving a note behind that read "Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth chooses death."

PHOENIX WRIGHT ACE ATTORNEY - JUSTICE FOR ALL:
Edgeworth is only mentioned for the first half of the game. Phoenix, distraught over what he considered a betrayal by Edgeworth, told anyone who asked that Edgeworth was dead. His disappearance led Franziska von Karma to come back to America from Germany in order to try and defeat Phoenix herself, thus proving superiority over Edgeworth by accomplishing what he couldn't; Phoenix handed her two sound defeats. Towards the end of Turnabout Big Top, a raid by Franziska on the true murderer's room and a crucial piece of evidence that allowed Phoenix to win his case are revealed to the player to have been arranged from afar by Edgeworth, who went abroad following his departure from the prosecutor's office.

Edgeworth returned in Farewell, My Turnabout, first to provide Phoenix with information on the murder of actor Juan Corrida, then as the prosecutor for that case when Franziska was shot in the shoulder by Shelly de Killer. Edgeworth knew from the beginning that Phoenix's client Matt Engarde was guilty, and helped Phoenix to come to the same conclusion. In this case, Edgeworth challenged Phoenix to question what the role of a defense attorney was, just as Edgeworth had been forced to learn what a prosecutor was. After learning that Phoenix was only defending Engarde to prevent de Killer from killing Maya, Edgeworth also worked with Phoenix in several attempts to recover her before the end of the trial. He later stalled the trial numerous times in order to give Detective Gumshoe time to locate her and to find evidence that could resolve the situation by keeping Maya alive and getting Engarde the guilty verdict he deserved.

The trial concluded with Edgeworth's first victory over Phoenix, depeding on the choice made by the player. Edgeworth briefly attended a celebration for Maya's safe return before he chased down Franziska, who was about to leave the country. He gave Franziska the whip that she had thrown angrily at Phoenix, and she resolved to come back and best Phoenix someday.

During the case, Edgeworth challenges the description for Matt's demeanor ('refreshing like a spring breeze'), which prompts Phoenix to suggest that Edgeworth has an allergy to pollen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Edgeworth