Saturday, August 4, 2012

There's a Spot in Idaho Where You Can't Go to Jail for Killing Someone

Or for committing any felony, for that matter. Yellowstone National Park is mostly in Wyoming, but chunks of it are in Montana and Idaho. To simplify matters, Congress made it so that all of Yellowstone National Park lies within the legal jurisdiction of the District of Wyoming. So if you commit a crime in Yellowstone National Park, even if you've crossed the line into Montana or Idaho, you'd be tried at the Wyoming district court.

But. However. The Sixth Amendment says that when you undergo a trial, the members of your jury must be from the state and district that the crime was committed in.

So if you kill someone in the 50-square-mile stretch of Idaho that's part of Yellowstone National Park, your jury could only be made up of people who are from the state of Idaho and the district of Wyoming. In other words, they'd have to be from that 50-square-mile stretch.

But that chunk of land has a population of zero. So no one could be on your jury. And theoretically, you would get off scot-free.

I hope this information is helpful.

Source: Brian C. Kalt, "The Perfect Crime," Georgetown Law Journal 93.2 (January 2005): 675-688, online here, via Futility Closet.

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