Yellowstone National Park (YNP) is located in Wyoming. However, there’s an area of the park that crosses the border into Idaho and is known as the Zone of Death.
Yellowstone National Park, home of the Yellowstone Supervolcano, was founded back in 1872, before Montana, Wyoming and Idaho had joined the Union between 1889 and 1890. The majority of YNP is within Wyoming, but some of it reaches into the remaining two states.
Law Professor at the Michigan State University College of Law, Brian C. Kalt, published a paper titled The Perfect Crime in 2005. In the document he argues that there was a “forgotten constitutional provision, combined with an obscure statute, that together make it possible for people in the know to commit crimes with impunity”.
The paper highlights that the District Court, which oversees legal matters concerning YPG, is entirely within the state of Wyoming, despite some of the park being in Montana and Idaho. Mr Kalt explained that unlike anywhere else in the United States, the District of Wyoming includes land in other states.
According to the paper, this means that under the US constitution, people could get away with murder in YNP if they were to commit the crime in the Idaho region of the park.
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The US Constitution states that any trial should be held in the state where the crime itself was committed. While under the Sixth Amendment, the defendant has the right to a jury composed of people from the state where the murder was committed and from the federal district where it was undertaken.
This means people living in the area where the crime occurred would sit on the jury.
However, no one lives in the 50-square-mile region of YNP that overlaps into Idaho.
Mr Kalt said: “T]he loophole looms, waiting for a murderer to exploit it. I feel like I’ve done what I can to prevent this; the blood will be on the government’s hands.”
However, he added that any assailants who exploited the loophole wouldn’t necessarily get away with it.
Mr Kalt said: “If the government could not prosecute you, your victims and their families could sue you. Of course, if they get wind of your Constitutional argument before you leave the scene of the crime, they could just give you a dose of your own medicine, administering vigilante justice with similar impunity.”