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0 pointstacticalturtle14d ago0 comments

You probably know this - but in most jurisdictions in the US, including federal, charges have to be approved by a grand jury of your peers.

There’s an old adage “a prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich”* implying that the grand jury is easily mislead - but in my anecdotal experience of serving on a grand jury - this isn’t really true. We definitely said no to overreaches.

And you can also see this happening in high profile cases with the Trump administration:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/us/politics/trump-sandwic...

Ignoring that, it’s not clear to me why removing jury trials would reduce the likelihood of a prosecutor throwing a larger number of charges at a defendant. Prosecutors want to demonstrate a record of convictions. That career pressure is still going to exist without jury trials - they’re going to throw anything they can and see what sticks.

*Fun Fact - Sol Wachtler, the judge who coined this, was later convicted of multiple felonies, including blackmailing an ex-lover and threatening to kidnap her daughter. A bit more substantial than a ham sandwich.

0 comments

derriz14d ago

I'm getting a lot of downvotes for the comment you're responding to so will likely withdraw from this discussion. But to be clear, I deliberately talked of prosecutors threatening charges, not actual indictments.

Conviction through plea-bargaining is almost exclusively a phenomenon in the US. It just doesn't feature in the normal process of public prosecution in countries like Ireland, the UK or Australia. Also as an aside, the grand jury system is exclusively an American feature.

And every common law country (including the US) has a bar in terms of seriousness of the crime, below which you are tried without a jury. Yes the bar is lower in the US (potential sentence of more than 6 months?) but this bar exists nonetheless without sensationalist claims that jury trials have been eliminated - which is what was stated in the comment I originally responded to.

hunterpayne14d ago

Also, I feel like there is something important you don't understand about the US system. A grand jury isn't a jury trial. A grand jury just allows a jury trial to happen (for a defendant to be charged at all). The defense isn't part of a grand jury. That's why the quote is what it is. It isn't talking about jury trials, just that a prosecutor can charge someone with a crime (the outcome them winning at a grand jury) pretty easily. Hope this helps.

danielparsons14d ago

that's not true - it's also common in Canada and Japan

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