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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
by cwnyth 1mo ago
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.
- V-eHGsd_ 1mo agoYou _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.
- pavlov 1mo agoJames Comey was indicted by the government for posting a picture of seashells.
- imperio59 1mo ago[flagged]
- ratelimitsteve 1mo agodon't stand next to the reflecting pool, you'll get arrested because the president is embarrassed by his own incompetence
- supercrevette 1mo ago[flagged]
- Planktonne 1mo agoNonsense. 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
- mionhe 1mo agoI'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?
- Planktonne 1mo agoWhat do you think '86' means? Do you understand that it is not literally the word 'murder'?
- anonymars 1mo agohttps://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/86 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/86
- natebc 1mo ago[dead]
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- hn937758 1mo agoFor 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.
- EvanAnderson 1mo agoIn 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".
- s3p 1mo agoThis 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.
- spl757 1mo agonot 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.
- dredmorbius 1mo agoContrast: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49386895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49386895>. (Cop-City activist arrested for failure to provide smartphone data in a customs search.)
- mindslight 1mo agoIt 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!
- ratelimitsteve 1mo agoyou 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.
- fwipsy 1mo agoWhat would have been the appropriate charge?
- ratelimitsteve 1mo agosimple assault or disorderly conduct
- Filligree 1mo agoBut that wouldn't have put him in prison for life.
- wang_li 1mo agoLaw & 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.
- dredmorbius 1mo agoSolomon "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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Wachtler>
- pohl 1mo agoMore 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.
- ljsprague 1mo ago>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?
- pohl 1mo agoNo, 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.
- JuniperMesos 1mo agoThe democratic party is the party in the US more often concerned with the interests of people accused of crimes by the criminal justice system. Republicans are more often concerned with the criminal justice system being insufficiently punitive and therefore tolerating crime.