You can.. but at the end of the day, the jury wants credibility so you have to be real careful. For instance, it’s hard to sell mental illness without history nowadays. It’s also hard to change bad facts.

You definitely present facts in a way that creates doubt though—cuz the DA has to “meet their burden” (as dumb as that shit is lol). So sometimes it’s your only defense and you gotta fuck shit up somehow with a stacked deck against you.

It certainly does. A lawyer's job is getting the best result for his client, not to find some objective truth. While outright lying is often too hard to pull off convincingly you can certainly frame the facts in your favour, play up the good parts, omit the bad parts and deny everything your opponent can't prove. This goes for civil as well as for criminal cases. There's a lot of bullshit artistry involved in lawyering.