The Color of Justice is Green and Gold
Author’s note:
The color of justice in the United States and around the world is green and gold. Those with money get all the justice they can buy, and almost never go to prison for their crimes; only poor and unconnected people go to prison. These are my Color of Justice poem.
The Color of Justice Is Green and Gold
The color of justice
is green and gold.
Those who hold it
write the rules
the rest of us must follow.
In one courtroom,
two men wait.
One posts bail before lunch,
walks out the door
he’ll walk through free,
at trial, and after.
The other sits in a cell,
a docket number
where his name should be,
waiting on a lawyer
who has three hundred other
names to learn.
Justice,
it turns out,
is a commodity —
priced by the hour,
billed in tenths,
bought in advance
or never bought at all.
Those without green and gold
go to prison,
are deported,
fined into debt they’ll carry for years,
or simply vanish
from the record,
the count,
the news.
from humanity,
In courthouses
and boardrooms
the colors never fade.
Not blind —
pricing everyone
who walks through the door.
Better,
in this country,
The land of the free
Home of the Brave
The United States of America
to be born
with green and gold.
That is the way
the world works.
That is the color of justice.
Addendum: The Cost of Justice in the US
The numbers behind the poem are stark enough to stand on their own. Private legal representation now runs, on average, close to $350 an hour nationally, with specialists and large-firm attorneys charging $500 to $1,000 or more — rates that put sustained legal defense out of reach for most households from the first invoice. Someone facing a serious felony charge who can pay privately is buying not just a lawyer’s time, but a lawyer’s undivided attention.
The public defender system, meant to guarantee that right regardless of income, tells the other half of the story.
A 2023 RAND Corporation workload study — the first major revision of national public-defense staffing standards since 1973 — concluded that the old caseload limits were outdated and not grounded in evidence, and proposed far lower caseloads to allow for competent representation given the realities of digital discovery, forensic evidence, and expanded advising duties.
In practice, public defenders are running far past even the old, looser standard: one 2022 analysis found the average public defender handling roughly double the felony caseload the outdated national standard allowed, with some states’ defenders managing well over double the recommended load.
Researchers on the RAND study note that excessive workloads force attorneys to prioritize some cases over others — a practice that violates professional ethics rules requiring lawyers to limit caseloads enough to provide competent representation, and that inevitably causes harm somewhere down the docket.
Pay reflects the same imbalance: public defenders earn roughly $77,000 to $95,000 a year on average nationally —
a fraction of what a private litigator bills in a matter of weeks — while carrying dramatically higher caseloads.
The gap isn’t just about outcomes in individual cases; it’s structural. One side of the docket buys time, investigation, and expert witnesses by the hour. The other side is rationed by a public budget that has never matched the constitutional promise behind it.
That’s the arithmetic underneath “green and gold” — not a metaphor, but a spreadsheet.
Standard Disclaimer
These writings and musings are entirely my own and the product of my overactive imagination and is based on my 70 years of lived experience, including 27 years of service in the US State Department as a foreign service Officer (diplomat) working in ten countries and DC, as well as travel to all 50 States, DC, and PR, and travel to 45 countries, and living in Alexandria, VA. Bangkok, Berkeley, DC, Bridgetown, Barbados, Mumbai (Bombay) India, Madrid, Spain, Medford, Oregon, Seattle, Yakima, Washington, and Stockton. California. Along the way, I married the lady of my dreams and learned to speak Korean, Spanish, and Thai. I retired in 2016 and have been splitting my time between Korea, Oregon, and DC, and am moving back to Alexandria this summer.
My writing tends to be neo-beatnik or outlaw poetry, wild SciFi speculations, or political rants. Some people will be offended by some
of my writing, but rest assured that is never my intention.
I have been using AI tools (Chat GP3, Claude, Copilot, and Gemini) for research and editing for grammar, punctuation, and spelling, the words are all mine.
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