What is Yellowstone besides America’s oldest and most popular national park, replete with natural wonders, a part of the only known natural waterway system in which a small and determined-enough fish from the Atlantic Ocean could theoretically use to swim to the Pacific Ocean, a Paramount+ streaming series about ranchers or something, site of a potentially apocalyptic volcanic eruption that would end human civilization if it were to erupt with full force, and the real-life inspiration for the iconic Jellystone National Park from the Yogi Bear cartoons?
Turns out it’s all of those things AND the place where in certain sections people could theoretically commit murder with 100% constitutional impunity! Per a report in the Independent, a Democratic Idaho state lawmaker is pushing the legislature to address a little quirk in the charter for the park which states the sole jurisdiction in which any crime committed within Yellowstone’s boundaries is the District Court of Wyoming. This is good and fine for most cases as the majority of the park lies within the state, but runs into a brick wall were those crimes to be committed within the Idaho portions of Yellowstone. The Sixth Amendment of the Constitution states a person has a right to an impartial jury of “the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed,” but since no one lives in the Idaho portion of Yellowstone it is possible – as Michigan State University law professor Brian Kalt discovered in 2005 – that a charge could be tossed on that loophole.
Per the Independent, Idaho’s state and federal lawmakers are trying to figure out the best solution in light of the recent murder of Gabby Petitio (which did not occur within the “Zone of Death,” but Kalt and others had been concerned over the possibility before her body was found in the Bridger–Teton National Forest in Wyoming and her asshole boyfriend killed himself anyway), as well as a popular TikTok video explaining the loophole and its inclusion in the plot line of an episode of the Paramount+ TV series. “It’s the most encouraging development in this story in the 17 years I’ve been working on this,” Kalt told the Independent about the legislative momentum.