The First Daybreak

The First Daybreak is the name of the first case in Acquittal: Induction as of the demo's release in 2017. It is set to be rewritten as The Tempest Dawn. In this case, Storm Sente is called to the bar to defend Richard Kingsley, who had been accused of killing his co-worker in her home.

Murder
On the 15th of March 2019, Kathryn Davies had taken a day off work, claiming to be sick. A few hours later, her manager, Benjamin Mendax, went home to get some money when he noticed the door to her flat ajar. When he looked inside, he found her lying dead on the floor. He gave his testimony to the police and reported that his employee, Richard Kingsley, had been acting strange at the time. That, coupled with the fingerprints found at the crime scene, led to Richard being arrested for the murder.

While all of this was happening, almost every lawyer in England was gathered at the Femley School of Law for a convention. It was then that they were all killed in a massive explosion. As the world of law had been torn apart by this disaster, a law student named Storm Sente had to be called to defend Richard.

Calm before the Storm
Storm arrived at the Crown Court later that same day to meet with his client who, to his surprise, was dressed in a horse costume. After some awkward questioning, he learned that he worked as a mascot at a fast-food restaurant, The Beefy Mare. He also learned that his work outfit was his only set of clothes, as he had sold everything else to pay his rent. While they were discussing the case, Storm's mentor, Charlie Lawrence, walked in. Storm was surprised to see his mentor still alive, which was when Lawrence revealed he'd been suspended from the Bar Council due to his underhanded courtroom tactics, and thus did not attend the Femley Convention. Lawrence gave Storm the encouragement he needed and they headed into the courtroom.

As Storm took his place, Lawrence introduced him to Sebastian Donovan, a noble prosecutor who cares about exposing the truth more than anything. The jury then made their way in and Justice Sullivan officially started the trial. Sebastian Donovan made his opening statement. A woman named Kathryn Davies had been found dead in her flat. He presented a glock, which had Richard's fingerprints on it, and the post-mortem report which confirmed the victim had been shot to death at 10:15AM that morning. Furthermore, Richard had confessed to owning the gun. The prosecution vowed to not only prove how the murder happened, but that it did happen.

Questioning Mendax
After accepting the evidence and briefly ensuring Storm was ready for his first trial, Sullivan allowed Donovan to call his first witness. Benjamin Mendax, the manager at the Beefy Mare where both Richard and the victim worked, took the stand. He claimed to have seen Richard walk down the street towards the apartment block during his break. Later, during his own break, Mendax walked down the same street to fetch some money from his own apartment. As he walked past Davies' flat, he noticed the door was open. Then he saw it; a woman, not moving, dead! Kathryn was lying on the floor with blood all over her chest. Storm objected to this, as the post-mortem report said that she was actually shot in the head. At that moment, he knew from the pumping adrenaline that calling out people's lies was what he was born to do. This contradiction shocked Mendax, but Donovan hand-waved the issue as the witness' memories could easily be blurry. He then asked Mendax to testify about when he found the body in more detail. Mendax's story remained mostly unchanged. He mentioned that cleaners usually leave people's doors open while they were cleaning, but there were none around, which raised his suspicions. He also mentioned searching the room, but found nobody. As there was nothing of merit in the initial testimony, Lawrence urged Storm to press the witness for more details. When asked for the time this happened, Mendax stated it was 7:30, which was when he goes on his break. Storm presented the post-mortem report again, as the victim was killed hours later, at 10:15. Storm also pointed out that this was when Mendax took his second break, suggesting he might have been able to kill her at that time. Donovan deflected this accusation on the grounds that he didn't have enough proof, but admitted that Mendax was a sham of a witness and had him escorted out of the court.

Debating the gun
Storm and Donovan spent the next half hour of the trial arguing over the gun found at the crime scene. The type of gun, a glock, was one that would require connections to the police to receive. Regardless, Richard admitted to owning the gun during his interrogation. Justice Sullivan, considering this evidence incontrovertible, decided it was time to declare Richard guilty. Lawrence, however, interrupted this motion, demanding an opportunity for a rebuttal. Sullivan accepted this request and allowed the defense to summon the detective in charge of the investigation to explain why the defendant's prints were on the gun.

His request granted, Detective Chief Inspector Lizzy Harrison took the stand. Storm was flustered by how young she turned out to be, even moreso when she started low-key flirting with him. Once Sullivan scolded her for this, she began testifying. Although she led the investigation, it was the Detective Chief Superintendent, Joseph Pilfnam, who responded to Mendax's call. She then specified that the gun had been found in the toilet bowl of Davies' apartment, as if the culprit tried to flush it away.

In her testimony, she mentioned that the bullet found in the corpse was proven to have been fired from the gun by it's ballistic markings. She also said that it was Richard who named Mendax as a witness before he approached them about it himself. While this was happening, forensics found the fingerprints all over the gun to perfectly match those of Richard Kingsley, which led to him confessing. Storm found this last point unusual, because if it had been submerged in water in the toilet bowl, any fingerprints left before then should have been much less clear than the ones the forensics found. Donovan suggested that Lizzy had been fed false information about the gun, as it had been presented by a member of the CID. Storm deduced that it must have been the gun's location that had been falsified; it was never in the toilet bowl in the first place. Lizzy not being the one to find the weapon backed this up.

Sullivan accepted this explanation, but then wondered where the gun was really found. After throwing out two possibilities, Storm realized that no one in the Criminal Investigation Department could have found the gun at all. Donovan demanded Storm provide evidence to explain how the police got the gun, so he called Richard to testify.

Richard testifies
Richard stood at the witness stand, taking the entire court by surprise with his horse costume. Sullivan demanded he remove it, but as he wasn't wearing anything else underneath it, he had no choice but to allow him to keep it on. Storm began his examination-in-chief by asking Richard why he owns a gun. Richard pondered the question for a minute before telling him his father gave it to him for his seventeenth birthday. He claims he doesn't have a license for it because he kept his possession of it a secret. Before Storm could press him further, Lawrence suggested he back off and let Donovan perform his cross-examination. Donovan ascertained that Richard was admitting to the crime and ended his cross-examination there. Storm didn't realize it at first, but Lawrence helped him realize that Richard was being blackmailed by the culprit into confessing. Donovan had realized this and was trying to show Storm this through how unhelpful Richard was being.

Storm used Richard's outbursts to declare him a hostile witness, which allowed him to finally cross-examine him. Richard repeated his confession in full detail, but contradicts himself multiple times, this time claiming that his mother gave him the gun for his sixteenth birthday. After calling all of these out one by one, Storm declared Richard's testimony a contradiction of common sense, and that Richard was being blackmailed into making this confession. The culprit did this to make sure Donovan didn't question the investigators about the gun.

Donovan demanded evidence that any of this took place, which stumped Storm until Detective Harrison returned with more details about the investigation. She had questioned the forensic pathologist, Dr. Lendez, about the fingerprints and learned that they shouldn't have survived while submerged in water. Lizzy had also done her own examination of the gun, and found Richard's fingerprints on it, despite Dr. Lendez's explanation. There were also traces of cornflower found on the handle, meaning someone wearing latex gloves had touched the gun. Storm suggested the culprit could have killed the victim while wearing such gloves, then had Richard touch the gun with his bare hands. Moreover, as Richard's fingerprints were only on the barrel of the gun, he could not have pulled the trigger. The court decided Storm still had not directly proven Richard's innocence, so Lawrence quietly told Storm that he should bring out the real killer. Storm called Benjamin Mendax back to the stand, as his account could take a new meaning based on what they had learned.

Mendax returns
Mendax returned to the court, spinning his spatula. He was ordered to testify about the body itself. This new testimony ended up being very similar to the ones he gave before, but this time he was lying well enough that Storm couldn't find any contradictions. Lawrence considered his previous errors might have been deliberate red herrings. Just as Storm had lost hope, Lawrence reminded Storm of his ties to the famous Greaves family, and his inheritance of their attentional control. All Storm had to do was calm down and analyze the testimony for what it was.

Storm thought deeply about Mendax's testimony, specifically about his discovery of the body. He realized that there was, suspiciously, a lot of blood on Davies' right hand to have come from a simple gunshot's blood splatter. This raised the possibility that the victim had been killed somewhere else and was moved to her apartment later, or that she didn't die immediately. Mendax insisted that he was telling the truth, no matter how improbable, so Storm presented the photograph of the crime scene to finally nail him. Mendax's claims were completely contradicted by the fact that were was no blood splatter on the walls behind the victim.

While Storm is summarizing his case against Mendax, Donovan presents the post-mortem report, specifically pointing out the part that mentions her fingers on her right hand were broken. Storm concluded that Davies was not shot from the apartment door, and that she sustained an injury to her right hand while she was under attack. Justice Sullivan agrees with Storm, and calls an hour-long recess to organize what they've learned.

That was just the first half!
Storm finally catches a breather in the lobby. Richard admitted that Storm had seen through his confession and that the culprit threatened to harm him and his family if he told the truth. His sham of a testimony was a gambit to make Storm realize this without technically going against his blackmailer's demands. He also admitted that it was Mendax who was masterminding this entire case. He agreed to admit to all of this in court as the final nail in Mendax's coffin.

As Richard returned to the courtroom, Donovan and Lizzy entered the lobby to discuss the case with Storm and Lawrence. Lizzy apologized for the way the CID had presented itself during the trial. She excused it on the grounds that the FemCon Incident was consuming their manpower, something that Storm had somehow forgotten about. Lizzy promised to head back to the crime scene to gather more information. Storm is doubtful about her, due to Answell CID's history of misconduct, but both Donovan and Lawrence vouch for her trustworthiness.

Once both of their visitors finally left, Lawrence broke it to Storm that they couldn't win with what they had. None of the evidence Storm had on hand would be of any use in implicating Mendax of the murder. Based on how Mendax covered up his murder, Lawrence theorized there was a conspiracy between Mendax and someone with the police. Therefore, it was likely that the investigation team had filtered the evidence to skew the trial in the prosecution's favor. Lawrence told Storm to continue his defense without him while he investigated the restaurant and the apartment block, and promised that he'd return with the decisive evidence he needed to prove Mendax's guilt. As he left the court, Storm returned to the courtroom, vowing to secure Richard's acquittal.

The demo ended here.

Notable Fan-theories and speculations

 * Lawrence FemCon Theory
 * Storm FemCon Theory
 * Mendax Murder Method
 * Kathryn Davies Didn't Die

References to Ace Attorney

 * When summoning Lizzy as a witness, Storm says he will "get to the bottom of her!" Phoenix Wright made a similar unfortunate remark in reference to April May in Turnabout Sisters.
 * After Storm points out the first contradiction, Lawrence tells him that a great lawyer once said "lies always beget more lies." This is what Mia Fey told Phoenix after he exposed his first contradiction in The First Turnabout.

Errors
There are many.