Persecuting Prosecutor

"...You'll what, Mr. Dent?"
"Hmm? Sorry, just indulging in a spot of imagination."

Manfred von Karma: Testify to the court about your arrest. Now!
Judge: W-w-wait! Mr. von Karma...
von Karma: Yes?
Judge: Actually, I'm the one who's supposed to be handling these proceedings...
von Karma: Wrong. There is only one thing you need to do here. You will slam down your gavel and say the word "guilty". That is your role!

— Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

We've all heard the Evil Lawyer Jokes. The Amoral Attorney will stoop to ambulance chasing to get taken on in a case. Maybe they'll take a simple case that can easily be settled out of court and blow it up into a media spectacle. Or they're the kind of lawyer that doles out Frivolous Lawsuits like they were going out of style. But what happens when those lawyers are the ones appointed by the state?

A subtrope of Amoral Attorney, the Persecuting Prosecutor will do anything and everything to secure a conviction, regardless of justice, the law, or basic human decency. Be it bribery, personal connections, Jury and Witness Tampering, or even outright murdering witnesses, they care far more about glory and a potential political career than the course of justice. As such, expect them to throw a huge fit in the courtroom if the defendant is acquitted.

Even though someone not being able to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt without "cheating" hardly proves they are innocent, the accused will almost always be innocent in this case due to Good Lawyers, Good Clients. That said, it's not uncommon for the accused to actually be guilty but are facing trumped-up charges.

Can operate in a Kangaroo Court alongside a Hanging Judge and/or be featured in a Joker Jury. May lead to someone getting Sentenced Without Trial and/or a Miscarriage of Justice. Often up against the Crusading Lawyer in a trial.

Even though there have been some real-life cases of this, No Real Life Examples, Please!

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Ace Attorney (2016): As the prosecutor in Avery Richman's retrial, Tristan Turnbull doesn't seem too suspicious at first, save for insisting that retrying the case will change nothing, but then it turns out that he was in charge of the trial in which Richman was convicted. Because he was ordered to convict Richman to dispose of a potential economic threat to the U.S., he ensured that a key witness, who was the true killer, never took the stand. When the witness later blackmails Turnbull, Turnbull murders him. When the truth is revealed, Phoenix, Edgeworth, and the U.S. chief prosecutor all call Turnbull a disgrace to his profession.

Comic Books

• Depending on the Writer, Harvey Dent may be portrayed this way prior to his scarring. Even more sympathetic takes, like "Eye of the Beholder" or The Long Halloween, will often have him toying with Jumping Off the Slippery Slope in his zeal to catch Gotham's untouchable criminals, ranging from planting evidence to flat-out murder. Once every so often, Two-Face will mock the justice system by playing this part in a kangaroo court.

Fan Works

• Mia Fey: Ace Attorney – The Fool's Turnabout: Sae Niijima in this story is an even more ruthless prosecutor than in her game of origin, being similar to the many antagonistic prosecutors from the Ace Attorney series. She is known for forcing confessions out of people, manipulating evidence, and doing just about anything to ensure a guilty verdict.
• Pound the Table: DA Lou Young, despite leading in the polls for his re-election, seeks to convict the "dangerous mutant" St. John Allerdyce to boost his credentials. He does everything within the bounds of legality in order to paint St. John as a threat to the jury, despite the charge of assault being a result of St. John defending himself from a mugging. It doesn't help that Young also has assistance from the presiding judge, who is also seeking re-election and is favoring a guilty verdict as a result. While Young gets his conviction, Captain America and Jonah Jameson via the Daily Bugle call out the trial being a sham, causing Young to find his poll numbers dropping and another candidate being the front runner. Had Young not been killed in an accidental hit-and-run, it was likely he was going to be voted out.

Film — Live-Action

• Victoria Thorne, the prosecutor in the Apocalypse film series movie Judgment, who is such a manipulative bitch.
• Dr. Cohen from Beau Is Afraid spends the final Kangaroo Court scene acting as Mona's mouthpiece for all of the deranged ways she thinks Beau wronged her, entirely ignoring what protestations Beau and his defense attorney (who's at the far end of the auditorium and doesn't have an amplified voice like Cohen does) can manage to his Insane Troll Logic.
• Jack Reacher: Alex Rodin, the District Attorney of Pittsburgh, has built up a reputation as an invincible prosecutor because he has threatened the people he prosecutes (without a lawyer present) with slamming the absolute worst sentence he can devise down on their heads (up to and including the death penalty) if they have to go to court unless they waive their right to counsel and confess. His own daughter Helen makes clear her suspicions that the jail is flooded with wrongfully accused suspects from cases that were allowed to go cold because they did not want to take their chances fighting Rodin in court, which is the reason she takes the James Barr case. Rodin Senior is such a hardcore jerk — even once accusing Helen of taking the case because she wishes to rebel against him instead of enforcing due process — that he makes a highly effective Red Herring about who is the Zec's mole in the Pittsburgh justice system.
• Law Abiding Citizen: Nick Rice is a high-profile prosecutor too proud of his perfect conviction record to focus on actually serving justice anymore. The plot of the movie is kicked off when, feeling he doesn't have enough evidence to guarantee the conviction of two men involved in a home invasion where the husband was assaulted, his wife was raped, and both she and the couple's daughter were murdered (he's totally wrong), he makes a plea bargain with the psychopath who actually committed the rape and murder to frame his accomplice (who only wanted to rob the place and tried to stop his partner's more horrific crimes) for the crimes and get him sent to the chair, while the murderer gets off with a slap on the wrist. This bites him in the ass when the husband isn't happy about it.
• Nine Dead: Kelly is an ADA in Los Angeles County who, after a recent string of courtroom failures that jeopardized her career, frames an innocent man for a liquor store robbery by tampering with the evidence.
• In The SM Judge, the villain is defined by this trope. The story is about a married couple where the woman is a masochist. When she finally dares to ask her husband for some BDSM and he complies, the villain finds out and tries to get him concocted as a wife-beater. And no, it's not as if he believes that she's a victim; it's merely an excuse to destroy them both.

Literature

• In Robert Bloch's short story "Enoch”, District Attorney Cassidy manipulates the clearly mentally ill murderer Seth into appearing sane to give him a harsher sentence, specifically by asking Seth to loan him his presumably hallucinatory master Enoch during Seth's trial. Unfortunately for Cassidy, Enoch is very real and takes him up on the offer, demanding Cassidy now kill people he can feed on. And when Cassidy refuses, Enoch decides to snack on him instead.
• In the Father Brown story "The Mirror of the Magistrate", the viewpoint characters comment on how hard Sir Arthur Travers appears to be trying to get a conviction, and wonder if he has a personal grudge against the defendant, or whether he's doing it to further his political ambitions. Neither. He's doing it because he's the actual murderer, and if he gets a conviction the case will be considered closed.
• Cornelius Fudge in the fifth Harry Potter book is a combination of both this and a Hanging Judge. At Harry's disciplinary hearing for using underage magic, Fudge unsuccessfully tries (it is implied) to mislead Harry's defense counsel as to the time and location of the hearing so that he'll miss it, refuses to let Harry testify in his own defense, and does everything he can to discredit both Harry and the one witness who does testify on Harry's behalf.
• The L.A. Quartet: Deputy D.A. Ellis Loew (later elected District Attorney) is a smug, short-tempered, falsely entitled man who only cares about his own career and throws a hissy fit if anything goes against his desires. As such he pushes for whatever he considers the most advantageous to himself, including regularly interfering with investigations (to the point of really running the Warrant office), encouraging the police to use violence to get information and confessions, and enabling the utterly brutal Sergeant Vogel (whom even the rest of the often violent and highly corrupt LAPD considers a mark of shame upon the department) simply cause he's advantageous to him. In "The Big Nowhere", he kicks off a Witch Hunt for communists hidden in Hollywood, despite knowing full well their are barely any real communists in the area, as it will net him good publicity and please the elites for trouble it will bring down on the unions, both of which are advantageous for his political career.
• Rats, Bats and Vats: Tesco, the prosecutor of a Kangaroo Court in the sequel, is so smarmy and Obviously Evil that one of the court-martial board members at Chip's trial mistakes him for the defendant and asks to be excused because she's already prejudiced against his character. He, señor prosecutor Gainor (who runs a drug ring), and a man they try to foist on Chip as his attorney (he requests Capra instead) are interested in nothing but making money by protecting Castrup and his cronies from the consequences of their General Failure and Corrupt Politician actions.
• In the novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption from Different Seasons, Red contemplates the idea that the prosecutor on Andy's case may have intentionally buried evidence that could have corroborated Andy's version of events. This might have either resulted in Andy being found Not Guilty or at least having a stronger defense. He notes on multiple occasions that the District Attorney who tried the case was well known to be ambitious and made big speeches that would be recorded in the newspapers and sway the jury to find Andy guilty in part to raise his profile in state politics.

Live-Action TV

• Blindspot: Throughout the series, US Assistant Attorney Matthew Weitz is a recurring antagonist. Whilst on paper doing his job of investigating agents for negligence and corruption, truthfully Weitz is more interested in bolstering his career through making arrests than uncovering the truth. As such he always operates on a "guilty till proven innocent" philosophy, with him regularly manipulating and misinterpreting events to make them look worse and push them into a corner. Amazingly he actually grows out of these traits after his efforts lead to him being promoted to becoming the new Director of the New York FBI, with his time working with the team leading to him rediscovering his conscience.
• The Defenders (2010):
  • Thomas Cole never sees anything positive in the defendants, doing everything he can to get the most out of their guilty verdict.
  • A female prosecutor seen in the first few episodes is called out on it when she tries to get a full guilty verdict on a client that she knows is not guilty.
• Desperate Housewives: The prosecutor in Bree's murder trial is willing to blackmail Renee with having her fiance deported in order to extract a testimony against her best friend.
• Dexter: Assistant DA Miguel Prado accuses his rival defense attorney Ellen Wolf of being an Amoral Attorney for "gaming the system" to let criminals off the hook. She in turn accuses him of judicial misconduct to get convictions. Miguel is eventually revealed to have manipulated Dexter all along to learn the art of murder from him. Miguel lacks the very integrity that he accuses Ellen of not having as he not only wants to subvert the legal process to kill criminals but anyone who pisses him off.
• In the Doctor Who serial "Trial of a Time Lord," the Valeyard, a villainous prosecutor and future regeneration of the Doctor, accepts a bribe of the Doctor's remaining regenerations to falsify evidence in order to secure the Sixth Doctor's conviction.
• For the People: The prosecution is stereotyped as government suck-ups who use the letter of the law to punish innocent civilians who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
• The Good Wife: In "Hail Mary", ADA Geneva Pine is shown to have hidden evidence that would have exonerated Cary Agos, evidence not fabricated by Kalinda, underline.
• In season two of Harry's Law, Harry is defending a man accused of murder in a high-profile trial. The District Attorney is prosecuting the case herself and is shown to be using many dirty tricks to secure a conviction. Harry will have none of that and when she beats the DA on an important motion, the DA starts a personal vendetta against Harry with having Harry arrested being just the opening salvo.
• How to Get Away with Murder:
  • Assistant District Attorney Emily Sinclair from the first half of season two, the prosecutor of Sam Keating's murder case and the Hapstall murder case, whilst initially seemingly just dedicated to uncovering the truth, quickly proves herself to be a smug, self-righteous and ruthless woman who will resort to anything to win. Including regularly using blackmail, planting illegal bugs on the defence and deliberately going out of her way to push everyone's buttons in the hope of getting a reaction out of them. She even goes as far as setting up an illegal meeting in an attempt to coerce the Hapstall siblings into taking a plea deal.
  • District Attorney Todd Denver, the aforementioned Sinclair's boss and replacement as an antagonist to Annalise and the K5, is even worse. He is a flat-out self-serving and corrupt man, with his only care being furthering his own career. During his prosecuting Wes's death in season three, he is willing to go to any length to ensure Analise takes the fall, including tampering with evidence and coercing confessions by threatening to arrest people on trumped-up charges. To top it all off, it turns out he's also secretly in the pocket of the people who actually killed Wes.
• Law & Order:
  • Law & Order: Jack "Hang 'Em High" McCoy, in particular, is known for hiding evidence, bullying witnesses, and generally abusing the law to get convictions. Although McCoy can generally be characterised as playing hard, but within legal limits, this isn't always the case. Withholding evidence, for example, is illegal when the evidence is "exculpatory" (tending to show the defendant's innocence), although prosecutors have only rarely been punished for this in Real Life. On the other hand, McCoy (usually) has the good graces to feel bad about some of his less proud moments, and also often has people telling him, "YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!" when he goes overboard. Michael Cutter isn't always so ready to accept criticism.
    • One case where McCoy nearly crosses the line is "Under The Influence", when he's prosecuting a drunk driver who killed someone. McCoy withholds exculpatory evidence because he lost a colleague (and former lover) to a drunk driver, and he wants this win for revenge. But at the last moment he repents and finds a way to get the evidence in.
    • McCoy does cross the line — and gets smacked down for it by a judge — when he is so certain that a paroled serial killer is going to kill again that he puts 24-hour surveillance on the man without a warrant or any evidence to justify it.
    • In the Season 6 episode "Trophy", one of McCoy's previous Assistant DA's is shown to have crossed the line when she hid evidence and suborned perjury from an expert witness to put away an accused serial killer. Years later, the killings start again, revealing that the imprisoned man was actually innocent.
    • Michael Cutter is definitely not above doing actions that are just a razor's edge away from unlawful (or at least severe misconduct) to get whoever is the criminal of the week. One example is in the episode "Tango", where he discovers that one of the jurors of his current case is a Stalker with a Crush of Connie Rubirosa and he tries to exploit this by offering him a meeting with Rubirosa in exchange for a "guilty" vote.
    • Inverted with Assistant DA Charlie Harmon in "Shadow". Harmon isn't prosecuting innocent defendants; he's cooperating with a crooked defense attorney to get cases against guilty defendants thrown out of court (and incidentally get paid huge amounts of money by said defendants).
  • Law & Order: Special Victims Unit:
    • ADA Casey Novak is a borderline example, often bending the rules to get convictions. She's eventually suspended for misconduct in the case of a police officer accused of rape.
    • Her replacement Kim Greylek is a straight example, repeatedly using the power of her office to give sex offenders the harshest sentences possible, even when it does more harm than good. Particular mention goes to her conduct in "Babes", where she goads a suspect into punching her just so she'll have an excuse to prosecute them despite a lack of other evidence.
    • Alexandra Cabot is also a straight example, though she's rarely called out on it. Particularly as a character in the short-lived ADA-centered spin-off Convictions, which sees her sometimes work against the ideals of the SVU department. She's the niece of a prominent judge and not at all shy about asking him for favors or leaning on other judges she has personal connections with to get her way. She eventually leaves the law field after failing to prosecute an abusive husband who later murdered his wife; "Sunk Cost Fallacy" sees her now instrumental in an organization that helps battered wives and their children "disappear," achieving justice in a different way entirely. This horrifies Olivia, as Alex isn't at all concerned about flaunting the law to do it.
  • In the second season finale of Law & Order: UK, Steele is accused of being this after it comes to light that his very first case resulted in a (very unsympathetic) man being wrongly convicted of murdering some boys (he was a white supremacist, but the real killer was a delusional religious zealot who considered the boys' actions immoral) when a witness statement identifying someone else was revealed to be suppressed. It turns out one of his subordinates did it and he's cleared, but he announces his resignation after the trial anyway because he still feels it was his responsibility.
• Lois & Clark: Following Lois being framed for murder in "The People vs. Lois Lane", her case is handled by District Attorney Michael Clemmons who is actively gunning for her to be found guilty to boast his career, with him happily boasting to his subordinate upon discovering she's merely been charged about how much the public hates a dirty journalist and thus how good this will be for him. Thus he not only leads a smear campaign against her but, upon discovering evidence that would exonerate her, suppresses it to ensure he would win (and then starts pushing for the death penalty). At the end of the arc, Lois's name is cleared and his antics lead to him being forced out of office in disgrace .
• The sixth season Matlock episode "The Foursome" features young and confident deputy DA Lauren Richmond, who has spent years studying Matlock's cases and uses her knowledge of his methods to deal him a surprising defeat at trial. That is, until her boss at the DA's office discovers that she planted several pieces of key evidence against Matlock's client to ensure a conviction, because she was convinced he was guilty and wanted to make sure Matlock couldn't Pull the Thread to get the guy off.
• Murdoch Mysteries: The Crown Prosecutor in "Hangman", who does everything to make sure the defendant gets hanged, even the obviously innocent ones. Once a judge suspects his methods, he confronts the judge, kills him, and frames a known criminal for it.
• NCIS: New Orleans: Season four involves the team dealing US Assistant Attorney General Eric Barlow, supposedly a star prosecutor with a long history of rooting out corruption, Barlow initially seems simply viciously overzealous in the accusations against Dwyane Pride of excessive force and abuse of power, with him refusing to even consider the possibility Pride is innocent before the investigation has begun. When in reality every person Barlow has exposed in the past was in fact an innocent whom Barlow himself framed for all the crimes, specifically so he could expose them and reap the glory and rewards leading to him ruining dozens of lives. Dwight being his latest victim, Barlow intends to frame him for a massive terrorist attack to net himself even greater prestige.
• Perry Mason:
  • District Attorney Maynard Barnes is one of the main antagonists of the first season (despite not being involved with the conspiracy behind the murder). Barnes is a smug, hypocritical, selfish, and callous man whose only interest in prosecuting the Dodson murder case is netting himself as much good publicity as possible, in preparation of him launching his political career. As such he resorts to numerous dirty (and often flat-out illegal) tactics, such as having Emily Dodson publicly arrested at her son's funeral, leaking classified details to the press to further the media campaign against her and even resorting to blackmail. It's heavily implied that his entire career has been built on nothing but mudslinging and intimidation, as when Mason starts winning he visibly deflates and is reduced to calling out ineffectual objections.
  • Thomas Milligan from season two isn't quite as bad as Barnes, however, he's still an arrogant, haughty humourless jerk who takes a very iron-fisted view to enforcing the law, talking about the importance of maintaining order and discipline (not that this stops him breaking it himself when it's clear Mason is going to win). Thus he utterly refuses all of Mason's attempts to work down the charges on McCutcheon case (even though he himself admits his evidence is mostly circumstantial) and is actively gunning to send two Mexican youths (one of whom is still in his teens) to the gallows. With it being all but stated his convincement of their guilt stems in a large part from them both being poor and not white.
• The Season 3 finale of Person of Interest has the leader of Vigilance put everyone he can find who is tied to the dubiously legal Northern Lights counterterrorism project put on trial before a Kangaroo Court. One of his courtroom antics is summarily executing one of the suspects on the witness stand for refusing to self-incriminate himself. Note that the whole schtick of Vigilance is protecting the people's Constitutional rights from corrupt companies and officials. When Control (head of the day-to-day operations of Northern Lights) is called up, her testimony is a "Reason You Suck" Speech about how he's broken just as many laws as her, but At Least I Admit It.
• In Proven Innocent, District Attorney Gore Bellows has made his career by jumping on cases involving "unsympathetic" defendants (read: people of color or LGBT people) and getting them the harshest sentences possible. The plot of the series is set off when Madeline Scott, one of the women he wrongfully prosecuted, having since become a defense attorney, finds out that Bellows is planning to run for State Attorney General and decides to ruin his chances of winning by digging into his old cases and proving that he played dirty in order to get his convictions.
• The Rookie: In "Threshold" following Nolan and Smitty arresting a desperate and timid shoplifter, Nolan is horrified to discover that Assistant District Attorney Sean Delmonte is charging him with armed robbery and assaulting a police officer (as Nolan accidentally dislocated his thumb whilst chasing him). Speaking to Professor Ryan, Nolan discovers Delmonte has a history of overcharging individuals (in particular racial minorities) and then pressuring them into accepting plea deals. Thankfully with Sergeant Grey's support, he manages to force Delmonte to walk back the charges.
• Shark was all about an amoral defense attorney who became a prosecutor after a client he'd gotten acquitted went on to murder someone. It should be noted that Sebastian Stark, while a classic rule-bender, did have his standards and wasn't nearly as much of a dick as some of the defense attorneys he went up against.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "The Drumhead", a visiting Admiral begins a witch hunt aboard the Enterprise-D, convinced that there are Romulan spies among the crew (despite her only evidence to that effect being quickly disproven). She relentlessly hounds a medic who concealed a Romulan ancestor on his application to Starfleet, humiliating him in front of the entire crew, and when Captain Picard tries to rein her in, she puts him in the hot seat with the intent to use his experience with the Borg as grounds to have him relieved of duty and arrested. When he throws the words of her father (a renowned judge) in her face, she completely snaps and starts ranting, without evidence, that he's a traitor to the Federation and that she's "brought down bigger men that [him]". Fortunately, this rant neatly discredits her in front of the visiting Chief of Starfleet Security, whom she had invited to watch the proceedings, and she's sent home in disgrace.
• On Suits, it is revealed that Harvey used to work for a District Attorney like this. When Harvey realized this, he quit and went into private practice as a corporate attorney. This comes back to haunt Harvey years later when the DA is investigated and Harvey finds out that the DA's actions caused Harvey to convict an innocent man.

Podcasts

• Old Gods of Appalachia: Hiram Cook, the prosecutor for the Green in the Men of the Rock's trial of Mr. J.T. Fields, comes across this way, being a sleazy, pompous figure with it being all but stated his only interest is increasing his own standing, thus he repeatedly attempts to lay all the blame upon Jack for events and tragedies that he was only tangibly (at best) involved in and even goes as far as bribing witnesses who don't blame Jack into giving testimony in hopes of further incriminating him.

Theatre

• Parade (1998): Leo Frank's prosecuting attorney Hugh Dorsey is portrayed as a callous, politically ambitious man who coaches witnesses to make false incriminating statements about Leo. When Leo's sentence is commuted from death to life imprisonment by Georgia's governor, Dorsey helps to stoke the public outrage that leads to Leo's lynching, and then successfully replaces the governor himself.

Video Games

• Persona 5: Sae is a prosecutor who is obsessed with merely winning cases, rigging outcomes in her favor with little regard for the truth. This is reflected in her Palace, which is located at the courthouse and takes the form of a casino, reflecting her lack of faith in real justice. Fortunately, Makoto is able to get through to her, and the prosecutor sees the error of her ways, becoming an ally to the heroes and later quitting her job to become a defense attorney.

Visual Novels

• Ace Attorney: Every prosecutor the protagonist faces (except Klavier Gavin and Winston Payne) comes to this at some point. However, Character Development often (but not always) makes them change their ways.
  • Your first introduction to slimy prosecutors is Miles Edgeworth, who has a reputation for being a "demon prosecutor" because of his shady tactics. In your very first case, he coaches a witness on the stand to get away with murder and introduces a sudden update to the autopsy report in the middle of court to negate a contradiction (over 2 decades and 6 games later, and the fandom still won't let him live that down). He quickly proves to be not as bad as he appears, as he truly believes every defendant is guilty due to Psychological Projection (he believes he is a Karma Houdini for accidentally killing his father as a child and loosens up considerably once it's proven he was innocent all along) and the influence of his Evil Mentor. Once Phoenix smacks sense into him by winning a few cases and successfully defending Edgeworth against murder charges, he shapes up admirably and becomes a Crusading Lawyer for the prosecution.
  • Manfred Von Karma, Edgeworth's aforementioned Evil Mentor, is pretty much the embodiment of this trope. A legendary prosecutor who is driven by an absolute obsession with perfection, for forty years Manfred has held his undefeated streak in the courtroom, and he is willing to resort to literally any length to maintain it. Thus he regularly withholds evidence, coaches and intimidates witnesses, harasses the defence council, and even flat-out bullies judges into submission. During his long career, he has ruined the lives of hundreds of innocent people and sent an unknown number to their deaths. He also spent years enacting an intricate revenge plot against Gregory Edgeworth for exposing his use of forged evidence (but still didn't lose the trial). First by murdering Gregory, then Manfred spent years building up Edgeworth to ensure he grew into Gregory's antithesis, all so he could frame him for two other murders and thus utterly destroy Edgeworth's legacy. All because of a minor blemish on his record.
    • Blaise Debeste, the Chief Prosecutor who gave von Karma the lone penalty on his otherwise spotless record, is no saint either. He ran an illegal auction, selling evidence of past cases to anonymous bidders. He also murdered two people and was part of the group that ordered the assassination of Di-jun Huang, the same incident that ruined the House of Lang's reputation as reputable investigators. Oh, and Debeste was the one who provided the forged evidence that led to von Karma's penalty, and von Karma hadn't known for a change that the evidence was forged.
  • Played With in regard to Franziska von Karma from Justice for All. She is the daughter of Manfred von Karma and inherited his toxic ideals (courtesy of Manfred's abusive parenting), with the addition of a personal grudge against Phoenix and the absurd gimmick of carrying a whip and attacking anyone who annoys her with it. However, unlike her papa, she's more of a Well-Intentioned Extremist who breaks the law only when she genuinely thinks it impedes the truth of a case; for example, using an illegally taken photograph to prove the existence of spirit channeling to make her case that a channeled spirit committed murder. She happens to be wrong, but it's because the case's villain was making it look like a spirit channeling had gone wrong, not that spirit channeling wasn't a thing. And when she isn't prosecuting herself, she is perfectly willing to help investigate, no matter where it might lead.
  • Godot (AKA Diego Armando) from Trials and Tribulations: Out for revenge against Wright, who he blames for Mia Fey's death, he covers up a murder he committed (though to save someone else's life) instead of confessing, potentially putting several people in trouble. While he's not as underhanded as other examples, he seems to care more about winning than about whether the defendants are guilty. He's also a little on the unstable side and prone to throwing cups of hot coffee at Phoenix. He was a lot more ethical before he was poisoned into a coma and woke up to find his girlfriend was murdered.
  • In Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, Jacques Portsman, a colleague of Edgeworth, has rather questionable morals since he refuses to prosecute certain cases, namely those dealing with the smuggling ring he belongs to, and murders the detective working under him and tries to frame Gumshoe and/or Maggey while stealing evidence.
  • While Winston Payne is a Villainy-Free Villain and legally clean (though annoyingly smug), his brother Gaspen Payne, introduced in Dual Destinies, is pretty much The Bully as a prosecutor, and takes pride in it, calling himself the "Rookie/Defendant Humiliator". At one point, he takes the time to badger the defendant into admitting her guilt, causing the Judge to sustain Athena's objection when his badgering drives her to tears. The post-credits scene also reveals that he actually is more than willing to use questionable methods, leading to him getting looked into by Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth. He returns in Spirit of Justice, where he turns out to have fled to a country that has outlawed defense attorneys simply so he can never lose. When Phoenix Wright decides to go up against him, Gaspen allows it but does not tell him about the Defense Culpability Act (which gives defense attorneys the same punishment as their clients if they're convicted) and how he will be executed under it if he fails. He even calls for giving the death penalty to a nine-year-old child to get Phoenix killed along with him as revenge for his loss in Dual Destinies.
  • Simon Blackquill from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies has no problem with threatening witnesses to ensure their cooperation, psychologically manipulating everyone in the courtroom, attacking the defense with a Razor Wind, and siccing his pet hawk on everyone. Oh, and he's a convicted murderer. He's faking it. The bird attacks are real and so is the sarcasm, but he's actually both entirely honest in his work and completely innocent; he framed himself for Metis Cykes' murder because Metis' daughter Athena had implicated herself pretty badly, and was so badly traumatized she forgot the whole incident.
  • In Spirit of Justice, there are several of them in Khura'in including the above-mentioned Gaspen Payne and Nahyuta Sahdmahi. The latter would like to be a normal prosecutor but he has to act like he believes Ga'ran's anti-lawyer propaganda because Ga'ran is holding his little sister hostage.
    • Queen Ga'ran, the prosecutor of the final trial of Spirit of Justice, uses their power as monarch to create the Defence Culpability Act, which means that defence attorneys are given the same sentence as their clients, essentially committing genocide upon lawyers. Then when they prosecute in the final case, they go all out; they rewrite the law on the spot at points, give out penalties instead of the judge whom they outright call a figurehead, and even attempt to hand down a premature guilty verdict, and interrupts the trial by having her own sister shot on the stand, in order to buy some time. At the very end, when exposed as the true murderer, she even makes a law that lets her execute everyone against her on the spot. She's only stopped when it's proven that she is in fact The Usurper, and all her laws are then rendered invalid. Considering that the person in question was an undefeated prosecutor in the past, including Justice Minister of the country, one has to wonder what sorts of dirty tricks they employed in their prior cases.
  • Barok van Zieks of The Great Ace Attorney is first set up to be even worse than Manfred von Karma, going as far as to imply he's secretly a Serial Killer who murders any defendants he can't convict — and flagrantly racist to boot. He then proceeds to be one of the least obstructive, most helpful main prosecutors in the franchise. Moreover, the first case against him is one of the few cases in the franchise in which the player gets a guilty defendant acquitted. As for the suspicious deaths of all the defendants he fails to convict? Lord Chief Justice Stronghart engineered them behind his back as a secret plot to turn Barok and his late brother into an Abstract Apotheosis of Laser-Guided Karma, and he actively helps to expose as the duology's final witness, even as the truths he discovers completely devastate him.
  • Kazuma Asogi, the final prosecutor of the second The Great Ace Attorney game. First introduced as Baron van Zieks' disciple, he approaches the final trial with a single-minded focus on convicting the defendant, the aforementioned van Zieks, out of a personal grudge, for a murder he himself colluded in. It takes several What the Hell, Hero? remarks to get him to come to his senses, and at the end of the case, Kazuma is ashamed enough of his actions to entrust his sword Karuma to Ryunosuke until he's dealt with his inner demons.

Web Animation

• In Turnabout Storm, Trixie has apparently taken a page out of Franziska von Karma's book, displaying a very similar behavior to that of the Ace Attorney prosecutor, starting with taking a case prosecuting Rainbow Dash out of personal vendetta against Twilight Sparkle, who's Rainbow Dash's friend and Phoenix's co-counsel.

Web Videos

• The Trial Of Tim Heidecker: Tim attempts to paint DA Rosetti as this during his trial, referring to him as "Rosetti the Rat" and accusing him of participating in an elaborate frame-up against Tim (potentially for reasons of pro-Chinese political correctness). Needless to say, Tim has zero evidence of this whatsoever.

Western Animation

• An early episode of Fairly OddParents gave us Jorgen Von Strangle acting as the persecutor in a Kangaroo Court.
  Timmy: Don't you mean 'prosecutor'?
  Cosmo and Wanda: No!
• The Simpsons: On the rare occasion he's presented as one, the Blue-Haired Lawyer is shown to be just as amoral and cutthroat acting as the prosecutor as he usually is. Potentially the most extreme version being "Bart the Murderer" when prosecuting Bart for being Skinner's murderer; when the still-very-much-alive Skinner arrives at the last minute and gives a testimony that completely exonerates Bart, he still tries to get the judge to strike the testimony from the record.

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