A photograph of poker chips was a piece of evidence in the trial of Phoenix Wright for the murder of Shadi Smith.
Role in Wright's trial[]
- Main article: Turnabout Trump
During Wright's trial, Prosecutor Winston Payne presented this photograph that showed the poker hands of Phoenix Wright and Shadi Smith, as well as how many chips they had. Payne used the photo to suggest that Wright killed Smith because he was losing, citing that most of the chips were on Smith's side of the table. Additionally, Olga Orly cited that the two different sizes of chips had values of 100 and 1000 points respectively, causing defense attorney Apollo Justice to assume that the big chips were worth 1000 points and the small chips were worth 100 points. But upon comparing the chips to the total points of 7000, Justice deduced that the smaller ones were worth more points due to this assumption giving the match a total score of 10600, which led Justice to the conclusion that Wright was actually winning by 4100 points to 2900. This allowed him to point out that this undermined Wright's supposed "motive" of being a sore loser, as he was winning.
Shortly after this, Orly claimed that Wright had cheated, which would have given him a motive as this cheat would've become obvious once the hands were shown. Justice questioned her further about this cheating, where she explained that Wright had two aces and Smith had three aces. Justice then used the photo to point out that there were only four aces, two in each hand. In order to clear up the contradiction, Justice's co-counsel Kristoph Gavin then asked to view the players' hands.
Later in the trial, Wright pointed out that Gavin had said that the cards were blue near the beginning of the trial, despite the fact that there was also a red set of cards and the crime scene photo presented earlier was in black and white. This caused Justice to argue that this colored photo contained a stack of blue cards, but Wright reminded him that Gavin made his statement well before the evidence came to light, therefore Payne was the only one who knew about it. It would eventually be revealed that Gavin had killed Smith, clearing Wright's name.
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