Basic Trope: A prosecutor is willing to use illegal, immoral or unethical methods to secure a guilty verdict.
- Straight: Bob is a prosecutor who is willing to manipulate witnesses to ensure the defendant is convicted.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob will forge and conceal evidence, manipulate witnesses and even murder people who are key to the case to force a guilty verdict.
- Even after a guilty verdict is guaranteed, Bob will pull strings to ensure that the defendant gets the harshest possible sentence.
- Downplayed:
- Bob normally does things by the book, but is willing to cheat to catch a criminal who proves to be above the law and thus leaves him no choice.
- Bob is unnecessarily rude in court, but only because he thinks it's part of his job, and he always does things by the book when it comes to the proceedings as such.
- Justified:
- Bob has become jaded from the sheer amount of actually guilty people who have avoided conviction because of technicalities, gaming the system or pulling strings, and has abandoned all moral standards in order to catch every criminal, any other consequences be damned.
- Bob really only cares about winning, not about justice.
- Inverted:
- Bob is a crusading prosecutor. He only ever uses moral and legal methods, and works towards ensuring that every culprit is found guilty and every innocent person is acquitted.
- Bob sabotages himself to lose the case because he knows the defendant is innocent.
- Bob is an unscrupulous defense attorney willing to forge evidence to secure an acquittal.
- Subverted: It's revealed that Bob didn't know the evidence he used in court was illegal. He received it from the police and believed it was genuine.
- Double Subverted: While Bob didn't forge the evidence, it's later revealed that he did manipulate a witness.
- Parodied:
- Bob cheats repeatedly despite the fact that he's in a Kangaroo Court that's already going to guarantee a guilty verdict anyway, and his dirty tactics only serve to prolong the trial until the Hanging Judge and the Common Nonsense Jury beg him to stop so they can finish already.
- Bob takes his commitment to do whatever it takes to catch every otherwise untouchable criminal way too much to the letter; he eventually prosecutes himself for the illegal tactics he used in his previous cases... and forges evidence against himself to make sure he gets declared guilty.
- Zig-Zagged: Bob is a Heel–Face Revolving Door who spends his whole career switching back and forth between prosecuting by the book and cheating to win trials.
- Averted:
- Prosecutors are characterized as simply doing their jobs, and always do things by the book.
- Bob is stated to be a prosecutor, but is never actually shown doing his job.
- No criminal trials take place in the work.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: Alice, an unscrupulous prosecutor, mentors Bob into becoming just like her.
- Exploited: Carol pulls strings to ensure Bob prosecutes a mob boss who has been gaming the system, trusting him to use whatever means necessary to finally score a guilty verdict.
- Defied: Elise, knowing forgery incidents have become more frequent in recent years, mentors Bob to always do things by the book and never forget that his job is to ensure a fair trial, not to get everyone convicted.
- Discussed: "You have a difficult trial ahead of yourself. Bob will manipulate witnesses, forge evidence and just generally do anything to find your client guilty".
- Conversed: "These underhanded prosecutors would lose their jobs very quickly if they were real".
- Implied: Dana reads a document establishing that Bob worked on That One Case from ten years ago that sparked controversy due to allegations of forged evidence.
- Deconstructed:
- Bob loses his job and gets incarcerated himself for using illegal methods. The cases he worked on are declared mistrials and the defendants are tried again with different prosecutors and judges.
- The fact that Bob can get away with his actions is a symptom of how terrible the court system in general is. Deconstructing the trope in another way, this also often renders him redundant, because many of his cases would have ended in guilty verdicts even if he hadn't cheated.
- Reconstructed: The same skills Bob uses to tamper with the crime scene enable him to cover his tracks, so he gets away with cheating because no one can prove that he did anything illegal.
- Played for Laughs: ???
- Played for Drama: Dana has to defend Fred, whom she knows is innocent, from a murder charge. Things get incredibly tense when it turns out the prosecutor will be Bob, who has a reputation for using underhanded methods to win but has avoided consequences due to lack of evidence of his cheating.
Go back to Persecuting Prosecutor, where you will be found guilty no matter what.
