In January 1985, Sol Wachtler, then the newly minted chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals, commented to The New York Daily News that prosecutors in his state could "by and large" get grand juries to "indict a ham sandwich."
To date, the ham sandwiches have remained free. But the spirit of the maxim—that district attorneys can usually secure an indictment regardless of a case's merits—has likely attracted some modern-day supporters with the prosecution of Daniel Penny, whom a grand jury indicted on second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide charges in June. This week, a judge rejected Penny's motion to have those charges dismissed.
