Nestled within the remote wilderness of Yellowstone National Park lies a 50-square-mile region in Idaho dubbed the Zone of Death. Discovered by law professor Brian Kalt in 2005, this geographical anomaly stems from an oversight in the Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution combined with the unique boundaries of federal judicial districts. The Sixth Amendment guarantees criminal defendants the right to a trial by an impartial jury drawn from the state and federal judicial district where the crime was committed.
When Congress created the District of Wyoming to oversee Yellowstone National Park, it assigned the entire park to this single federal district, even though parts of Yellowstone extend into neighboring Idaho and Montana. Consequently, if a serious crime were committed in the uninhabited Idaho section of Yellowstone, federal jurisdiction applies because it is inside the park. However, according to the Sixth Amendment, the jury must be composed of people who reside in both the state of Idaho and the judicial District of Wyoming.
Because no people live in this specific intersection of Idaho land inside Wyoming's federal district, a constitutional jury cannot legally be impaneled. Professor Kalt published his findings in a 2005 paper titled The Perfect Crime, hoping Congress would fix the loophole by splitting Yellowstone into its respective state judicial districts. Despite media attention and warnings from legal experts, Congress has left the loophole uncorrected, relying instead on legal maneuvers, plea bargains, and practical deterrents to discourage anyone from testing this terrifying constitutional oversight.