This country is governed by our constitution which declares in the sixth amendment that the defendant has a right to be tried by a jury from the state and district where the crime took place. But there’s a 50-square-mile area in the United States that has a population of 0, which means that if someone were to commit a crime within its borders, there’d be no “constitutionally legitimate jury” to try the offender, as outlined by Idaho Capital Sun.
This area is known as the “Zone of Death.” It’s located in Idaho within a portion of Yellowstone National Park. This legal vacuum was first noted by Brian Kalt, a professor of Michigan State, in an article he wrote in 2005 that was published in the Georgetown Law Journal.
To clarify the aforementioned scenario, if “person A” commits a crime within the Zone of Death, they can ask for a jury consisting of those from the state and district of the Zone of Death. The District of Wyoming handles ordeals in all of Yellowstone National Park. Yet, the catch lies in the fact that the Zone of Death is in the sliver of the park that extends into Idaho, and no one actually lives there. So though there are people living in the District of Wyoming, there’s no one living in the Idaho portion of the park to shape a jury. Thus, “person A” technically would get off unscathed.
So what would need to happen to change this constitutional catch? Congress would need to declare The Zone of Death under the jurisdiction of the District of Idaho. Representatives like Colin Nash have already made efforts to enact this into law. Of course, there’s been plenty more discussions surrounding the Zone of Death and its quite easy to fall down a reddit black hole. However, to this day, the Zone of Death remains in the legal loophole.