There's an infamous phrase in Russian (attributed to Stalin's Chief Prosecutor Vyshinsky):
"Был бы человек, а статья найдется"
Translated literally, this means
"if there was a man, an article {{meaning "a law to convict him under"}} will be found"
Is there an idiom in English that reflects the same meaning? (e.g., "we, as the judicial power, can find an appropriate legal excuse to convict anyone and everyone")
Best Answer
A good prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich.
The original phrase, attributed to New York judge Sol Wachtler, from 1985, went something like this:
It was immortalized in the Tom Wolfe novel "Bonfire of the Vanities" (1987).
The phrase succinctly summarizes the state of legal affairs where a prosecutor can find some law written somewhere that even the most well-behaved citizen has broken.
Update
For those who think that being indicted is less severe than being convicted, you may want to become familiar with the process and its consequences, as described in Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything Is a Crime (Glen Reynolds, Columbian Law Review, July 8, 2013) on how prosecutors might pick the laws they choose to indict under in order to obtain likely conviction. In the end, this can make indictment vs. conviction a distinction without a difference. This is exactly what the OP is describing.
Taking the quote from the article:
So, if the prosecutor wanted to convict someone, then some obscure crime with a severe penalty would be found that would apply.