Sol Wachtler

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Sol Wachtler is a New York State lawyer and former Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, which is the highest position in the State judiciary.

1 Career
2 Life after NY Court of Appeals
3 "Ham sandwich" quote
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Career

He earned his B.A. and LL.B. from Washington and Lee University.

Wachtler began his government career in 1963, when he was elected a councilman of the town of North Hempstead. He was elected to the New York State Supreme Court in 1968 and elected to the New York Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, in 1972. In 1985, he was appointed Chief Judge of the State of New York and the Court of Appeals.

In 1992, he was arrested on an expressway while driving home, and later pleaded guilty to harassing his former mistress Joy Silverman and her teenage daughter. Wachtler had written her harassing letters in the guise of a fictional alter ego, and mailed a condom to her young daughter. The judge claimed mental incapacitation. He resigned his judgeship and subsequently resigned from the bar as a result of this incident. He also served time in mental health unit of a federal prison. Wachtler currently works in the area of alternate dispute resolution and is an adjunct professor of law at the Touro Law School. He was reinstated to the New York state bar on October 2, 2007.^[1]

Wachtler's severe bipolar illness aside, the former New York Chief Judge's accomplishments on the bench are notable. Famous for the remark, "A marriage license should not be viewed as a license for a husband to forcibly rape his wife with impunity," Wachtler was a key figure in making rape in the context of a marriage a criminal offense. (People v. Liberta). His groundbreaking work on the court also led to the broadening of protections for the disabled and racial minorities.

[edit] Life after NY Court of Appeals

Since his prison time, Wachtler has written his own prison memoir, After the Madness (ISBN 0-7592-4519-3), and a fiction book, Blood Brothers (ISBN 1-59007-421-1).

He is currently the chief executive of Comprehensive Alternative Dispute Resolution Enterprise (CADRE), an alternative dispute resolution firm based in Great Neck.

Wachtler is an adjunct professor at Touro Law School.

[edit] "Ham sandwich" quote

Wachtler famously observed that prosecutors have so much control over grand juries that they could convince them to "indict a ham sandwich."[1] The phrase has become something of a cliché used in legal dramas such as in the Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode "Poison."