In 2005, Michigan State University law professor Brian Kalt published a shocking law review paper exposing a bizarre Constitutional glitch: a 50-square-mile uninhabited strip of Yellowstone National Park where a jury cannot legally be formed. The issue stems from the intersection of federal court jurisdiction and the Sixth Amendment of the U. S.
Constitution. When Congress created the District of Wyoming in 1889, it placed all of Yellowstone National Park under the jurisdiction of the U. S.
District Court for the District of Wyoming, even though small portions of the park bleed into neighboring Idaho and Montana. However, the Sixth Amendment's Vicinage Clause guarantees a criminal defendant the right to a trial by a jury drawn from both the state AND the federal judicial district where the crime was committed. If a crime is committed in the Idaho portion of Yellowstone, the vicinage clause requires that the jury members must live in both the state of Idaho and the federal judicial district of Wyoming.
But the Idaho portion of Yellowstone has a permanent population of precisely zero people. Because no one lives in that overlapping geographical area, a constitutional jury of peers cannot be impaneled. Without a jury, a trial cannot take place, leaving federal prosecutors unable to secure a legal conviction.
Despite public outcry and calls from legal scholars to fix the boundary error, Congress has repeatedly declined to pass simple legislation placing the Idaho section under the District of Idaho.