Yellowstone National Park, created as the nation’s first national park in 1872, covers 2.2 million acres of the country’s most picturesque landscape where, according to the National Park Service, “visitors have unparalleled opportunities to observe wildlife in an intact ecosystem, explore geothermal areas that contain about half the world’s active geysers, and view geologic wonders like the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River.”
Along the way, you might be able to see a dead body, too.
For the most part, Yellowstone resides in Wyoming, but the park extends into Montana and Idaho.
There is a 50-square-mile area in the Idaho section of Yellowstone where, thanks to a Constitutional defect, a person could theoretically avoid conviction for any major crime, up to and including murder.
According to Clark Corbin reporting for Idaho Capital Sun in 2022, “It’s rugged and remote, with no roads, a place where the trail grows faint and grizzly bears or cascading waterfalls could be just around the corner. Nobody lives there, and almost nobody camps there overnight. There are even rumors that you can get away with murder there.”
It’s called the Zone of Death.
The Zone of Death exists because of the United States Constitution, which guarantees the right to a jury trial. This is specified three separate times — in Article III, Section 2; in the Sixth Amendment; and in the Seventh Amendment.
Specifically, the Sixth Amendment states, “the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.”
Here’s the rub.
The United States District Court for the District of Wyoming has exclusive jurisdiction over Yellowstone National Park, and it is the only District Court with jurisdiction over parts of multiple states.
Furthermore, trials in the district court are typically held at the federal courthouse, which is in Cheyenne. In Wyoming.
See the problem?
Charges for a crime allegedly committed in the Idaho sliver of Yellowstone would have to be tried before a jury consisting entirely of residents of that area.
But no one lives there.
That means a jury of residents of both the state and district could not be booked.
No jury means no trial. And no trial means no conviction.
No conviction means a person could literally get away with murder, making fictional law professor Annalise Keating proud.
Michigan State University law professor Brian C. Kalt discovered this Constitutional crack.
Kalt’s 2005 article “The Perfect Crime” was published in the Georgetown Law Journal, and it introduced this anomaly.
Kalt wrote that “some forgotten constitutional provision, combined with an obscure statute, [. . .] together make it possible for people in the know to commit crimes with impunity [. . .] a constitutional ‘perfect crime.’”
The idea of the Zone of Death has captured popular imagination.
Fans of the hit television show “Yellowstone,” starring Kevin Costner as family patriarch John Dutton, are more familiar with the idea than they might realize.
That’s right. The often-mentioned “train station” is a reference to the Zone of Death.
As Michael John Petty pointed out in a 2024 article for the entertainment news site Collider, the Duttons and their minions dump bodies at the “train station” because they “feel as if they can kill anyone and get away with it, since no witnesses exist for miles around.”
Of course, the television show moved the location of the Zone of Death to make the geography fit the fictional story, but the “train station” followed a track of reality.
Before the Duttons used the area as the depot for the deceased, Julian Pinder produced a 2016 mockumentary titled “Population Zero” that, according to the Los Angeles Times, focused on someone committing murder in the Zone of Death.
Likewise, and directly inspired by Kalt’s article, Wyoming-based author C.J. Box based his 2007 novel “Free Fire” on a character committing murder in the Zone of Death.
Additionally, the Zone of Death has been the focus of The Atlantic’s “The Experiment” podcast, the Colorado State University “Outside History” blog series, and a 2019 episode of ABC’s legal drama “For the People” entitled “This is America,” among others.
This ongoing attention in popular culture has translated into congressional scrutiny.
Reporting by Vox pointed out that some Idaho senators have “promised” to look into the situation, and CBS reported that the 2019 disappearances of 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and her little brother, 7-year-old JJ Vallow, increased calls for the Zone of Death legal hole to be filled.
According to the Idaho Capital Sun, in 2022 an Idaho legislator specifically asked the U.S. Congress to close Yellowstone’s “zone of death” loophole.
However, as the Fausone and Grysko Law Firm pointed out in 2024, the Zone of Death continues to exist because no legislation remedying the chink in our Constitutional armor has been passed.
But fixing the fault would be rather simple, according to Kalt.
Speaking with Madison Dapcevich at Snopes, Kalt said, “All Congress would need to do is to redraw the judicial district boundaries to follow state lines, just like every other district in the country.”
Unfortunately, this seems unlikely to happen.
Still, it is important to know about the Zone of Death.
Not so you can exact your own vigilante justice. But so you are aware of the intricacies of the United States legal system.
And you never know, by being informed about the Zone of Death, you might be the hero of your trivia night team.
If nothing else, though, you’ll know to avoid the Idaho strip of Yellowstone National Park on your next family vacation.
You know. Just in case.
Todd R. Vogts, Ph.D., is a native of Canton, a resident of McPherson County, and a media researcher and educator. He can be contacted with questions or comments via his website at www.toddvogts.com.
