indict a ham sandwich

Possibly alluding to ham sandwich (“something utterly commonplace, of modest value”). The term was popularized by the American jurist Sol Wachtler (born 1930) who used it in 1985 shortly after his appointment as Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals when expressing the view that the use of grand juries to bring indictments should be abolished: see the 1985 quotation.

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /ɪnˈdaɪt‿ə ˌhæm ˈsændwɪt͡ʃ/

• Audio (Southern England):

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• Audio (General American):

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• Hyphenation: in‧dict a ham sand‧wich

indict a ham sandwich (third-person singular simple present indicts a ham sandwich, present participle indicting a ham sandwich, simple past and past participle indicted a ham sandwich)

1. (intransitive, chiefly US, criminal law, humorous, hyperbolic, idiomatic) Of a grand jury: to charge a person with a crime, despite a perceived lack of evidence. [from late 20th c.]
   • 1979 September 2, Nancy Monaghan, “Grand jury system—justice behind closed doors”, in Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, N.Y.: Gannett Co., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 1, columns 1–2:

     Advocates of the grand jury say it is the only shield in the criminal justice system between police and prosecutors and the accused. […] But critics say the grand jury doesn't shield anybody because the prosecutor runs the show. "The district attorney could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich if he wanted to," one Rochester defense lawyer said.

   • 1985 February 1, Marcia Kramer, Frank Lombardi, “Top judge: Abolish grand juries”, in New York Daily News, Jersey City, N.J.: Daily News Enterprises, →ISSN, →OCLC, page C4, column 1:

     In a bid to make prosecutors more accountable for their actions, Chief Justice Sol Wachtler has proposed that the state scrap the grand jury system of bringing criminal indictments. Wachtler, who became the state's top judge earlier this month, said district attorneys now have so much influence on grand juries that "by and large" they could get them to "indict a ham sandwich."

   • 1987 October, Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities, New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, published 1988, →ISBN, page 603:

     [H]e merely had to couch his presentation in a certain way, give a few verbal winks, as it were, and the grand jury would catch on immediately. But mainly you used the grand jury to indict people, and in the famous phrase of Sol Wachtler, chief justice of the State Court of Appeals, a grand jury would "indict a ham sandwich," if that's what you wanted.

   • 2022 April 14, Ariana Garcia, quoting Lina Hidalgo, “Harris Co. Judge Lina Hidalgo on Staff Indictments: 'A Grand Jury can ‘Indict a Ham Sandwich’”, in Chron‎^[1], archived from the original on 6 August 2025:

     When asked in an interview Thursday with ABC13 if she was worried about being indicted herself, Hidalgo responded "I don't know how far this is going to go and it's very easy if you present one-sided facts to a grand jury. Everybody knows that a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich if that's all they see."

   • 2023 March 31, Maria Cramer, “Here’s how indictments work in the United States’ legal system”, in The New York Times‎^[2], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 31 August 2025:

     Grand jurors hear evidence and testimony only from prosecutors and the witnesses that they choose to present. They do not hear from the defense or usually from the person accused, unlike in a criminal trial where proceedings are adversarial. […] That one-sided arrangement often leads defense lawyers to minimize indictments and argue that prosecutors could persuade jurors to "indict a ham sandwich," a proverbial phrase that former Vice President Mike Pence used on CNN Thursday night.

• Barry Popik (15 July 2004), “Indict a Ham Sandwich”, in The Big Apple‎^[3], archived from the original on 19 August 2025.