"Injustice For All"

This morality picture on the death penalty blatantly represents the biased, underlying problem of the criminal justice system. To the left of the picture is Lady Justice, representing the whites put on trial. To the whites, Lady Justice is blindfolded in order to be impartial to race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. The sword of Lady Justice represents the enforcement of her convictions, which are supposedly fair and just to all. However, this is not the case seeing as the whites on trial for the death penalty end with their lives, unlike the people of color, who end with the looming prospect of death. The right half of the picture is the Grim Reaper, representing the other side of Lady Justice as the personification of death. This Grim Reaper side of justice, unlike Lady Justice, is not blindfolded, seeing everything and judging everything. In his hands is the scythe, the weapon with which the Grim Reaper harvests the souls of the lives he takes and transports them to the afterlife. This just adds to the suspense of imminent death that awaits people of color. In the bottom right hand corner, barely visible, is a seemingly out of place bird, looking onto the scene of supposed "justice" and realizing that, in reality, the death penalty is "injustice for all," posing the question in the viewers mind: is the criminal justice system actually fair for all? The title of the picture is "And Justice for All (a study in black and white). This satirical play on the words “a study in black and white” means not only that the picture is in black and white but represents study of whites vs blacks when it comes to who gets death, unjustly, more often than the other. This picture accurately represents biases of the criminal justice system through the two sides of Lady Justice: the seen and the unseen.