If it didn't originate with the show, Law & Order (the original run) has the line: "You could get a ham sandwich indicted" was said to Jack McCoy in one episode. I think I remember it coming up again in another episode.
If it didn't originate with the show, Law & Order (the original run) has the line: "You could get a ham sandwich indicted" was said to Jack McCoy in one episode. I think I remember it coming up again in another episode.
Solomon "Sol" Wachtler appears to have coined the phrase.
He is a retired New York judge, ultimately chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals.
And still living at 96.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Wachtler>
More color to this tidbit:
He was a republican. He wanted to stop using grand juries to bring indictments, so he wasn’t impartial in his assessment.
Unrelatedly, he had an affair with a republican fund-raiser. When it ended, started making threats to kidnap her daughter, who was 14 at the time. He sent a sexually explicit note to the daughter, enclosing a condom.
He got a 15-month prison sentence.
This is who republicans are quoting whenever they repeat the phrase that “you can indict a ham sandwich”.
The real force behind the low no-true-bill rate for federal grand juries is that the DoJ had extraordinarily high standards for themselves before they even approached a GJ. They had to believe they could convict and sustain on appeal. They haven’t lived up to those standards for a couple years now.
> He was a republican.
He was born in 1930, though, so it's hard to say that he shares much in common with the ideology we call republican today.
I appreciated the interesting info on the originator of this quote, though this sentence made no sense to me:
> This is who republicans are quoting whenever they repeat the phrase that “you can indict a ham sandwich”.
Frankly, I've seen all types of people use this quote, not just Republicans, which is a simple statement that there is a very low bar to indict in a grand jury proceeding, which any reasonable assessment of the statistics would deem true. The fact that the originator of the quote turned out to be a douchebag is totally irrelevant.
Also, I think this part is missing a very important step:
> The real force behind the low no-true-bill rate for federal grand juries is that the DoJ had extraordinarily high standards for themselves before they even approached a GJ. They had to believe they could convict and sustain on appeal.
While that may explain the very high conviction rate at trial, getting a grand jury indictment was also an excellent way for prosecutors to get a plea deal if the accused was looking at decades in jail even if the "beyond a reasonable doubt" threshold would be unlikely to be met.
> He was a republican.
And Democrats were the party of slavery. Why do you bring this up? I'd think the Hackernews crowd would know history and wouldn't be surprised that on a long enough time line, philosophies change.
>This is who republicans are quoting whenever they repeat the phrase that “you can indict a ham sandwich”.
Do you think that only Republicans say this or something?
No, but there’s more incentive to propagate the trope of you or your friends find themselves in a position where downplaying a federal indictment is a PR move you’d want to make. Yes, that could be anyone, but the indictment rate by party of administration sure is an interesting statistic.
Ah, so it was topical!
Law & Order often takes from reality. The ham sandwich phrase is attributed to Solomon Wachter who was a judge on the New York court of Appeals and is anecdotally dated to the mid or late '80s. And then went widely into the culture and has shown up in novels, academic papers, and tv.
You _used_ to be able to indict a ham sandwich anyway. These days the federal government can’t even manage to indict someone caught on video throwing a hand sandwich at law enforcement.
James Comey was indicted by the government for posting a picture of seashells.
For anyone not familiar with slang, to be "86'd" means banned. You get 86'd from a bar. They don't murder you on the way out.
In restaurant server parlance it means "item no longer available". The stock of baked potatoes has been depleted so the word goes out to the serving staff to "86 the baked potatoes".
don't stand next to the reflecting pool, you'll get arrested because the president is embarrassed by his own incompetence
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Nonsense.
Using the most motivated possible reasoning, you can just about stretch to an implicit call for murder but
- Definitely not an explicit one
- There are far stronger non-murder interpretations
I've been unable to think of any in light of what was going on at the time and his previous messaging.
Can you share some interpretations you've come up with that fit those criteria?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/86
What do you think '86' means? Do you understand that it is not literally the word 'murder'?
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This seems like a very one sided view honestly. You could also say that, these days, the federal government can’t even manage to indict their political enemies, because DOJ under the current admin keeps getting laughed out of court.
Contrast: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49386895>.
(Cop-City activist arrested for failure to provide smartphone data in a customs search.)
not every time. there are people in jail/prison due to the times that the DOJ does not get laughed out of court. I think someone accused of being "antifa" got 100 years to make an example. I don't have the article to site, but shouldn't be hard to find.
you can indict a ham sandwich if you don't try to convince a grand jury that a mustard stain is terrorism. the grand jury found that throwing a sandwich at someone doesn't rise to the level of assault. what dude did was never contested, and they would have gotten a conviction if they charged appropriately, but instead they tried to "make an example" of him and instead they got made an example of.
What would have been the appropriate charge?
simple assault or disorderly conduct
But that wouldn't have put him in prison for life.
It does really demonstrate societal rot - the public's loss of trust in so-called "law enforcement" due to how they've come to often behave as lawless thugs. And so if you want to restore the public's trust (vital social technology), then advocate for civil rights and legal accountability on those tasked with enforcing the law!