- There's a 50-square-mile area, out in the wilderness of
Yellowstone National Park in the USA, where it's said that
thanks to a legal loophole, you can get away with murder. Or any other crimes
you might want to commit. I'm just about to enter that area. There is exactly one road
that leads in and out of the so-called
Zone of Death. And before I came here, I talked to the person
who discovered the Zone. - My point in talking about it,
whenever I do, is not to encourage
people to do this or to say, oh, it's great that
people can get away with murder. The point is,
I think they should fix it. - That's Brian Kalt, the law professor
who discovered the loophole in 2005, and wrote a law journal
article about it. And yes, he was the one who
nicknamed it "the Zone of Death". - Most accounts have
important parts of it wrong. There are a lot of limitations
and a lot of caveats. Technicalities really matter here. - And I like technicalities. So I'm going to explain this
as fast as I can, stay with me. First: if you commit a crime
in the United States, you can usually be prosecuted
either by the state, or by the federal government, the one that's in charge
of the whole country. But Yellowstone National Park
is special: within its borders, only the federal government
can prosecute. - Now, for federal law, Congress,
the people in charge in Washington, they divided the country
into 94 districts. Those districts don't
cross state lines. So there's a district for
northern California, or eastern Texas, or for all of Arizona because
there aren't many people there. With one exception: Congress gave all of Yellowstone Park
to the federal district for Wyoming, despite the fact that some small
parts of the Park, like this, are actually in the states
of Idaho and Montana. So right now, in this
50-square-mile area, in the Zone of Death, I'm standing in the state of Idaho,
but the federal district for Wyoming. Now, if you're accused of a crime, the Sixth Amendment
to the US Constitution says that you have a right
to a trial by jury, where that jury is made up of
people from the "state and district" where the crime was committed. The Constitution could have
just said "state OR district", or it could've just
said "district", but it doesn't say that.
It says "state AND district". So for crimes committed in this
weird little overlap zone, a jury would have to be picked
from just the people who live in Idaho state
and Wyoming district, which would be just the people
who live in this zone. And the population here is zero. So no jury, which means no trial, which means in theory,
no conviction. - Because Congress colored
outside the lines here, they would need to let you go. To be clear, the prosecution
wouldn't just concede, they would say, well, look,
this is just a technicality. The problem with that is: the Sixth Amendment says very clearly
and plainly what it requires. In the federal system, the only one
who can request a change of venue is the defendant,
and that's not gonna happen. - So this is not a place
where "crime is legal", the law still applies here. I'm not stupid enough to try and test
it by committing a felony here. Apologies if you thought
I was that stupid, I am on YouTube after all. But if I did that,
I would still be arrested, I would still be put on trial. Something like that has happened, in the Montana portion of the Park
north of here. A few people do live
in that section, so it's not literally impossible
to put a jury together, but there's probably not enough people to make up an impartial jury
to the standards needed. - There was this guy some years back
who poached an elk. The public defender said, well, look,
the constitution says the jurors have to be from the Montana
portion of the park. And the judge, he said, well,
that's what the sixth amendment says, but if I followed that,
then I'd have to let him go. And I can't just let him go. I'm paraphrasing here, but there wasn't
any additional legal reasoning. - The legal histories of almost every country are littered with examples of people
finding a way to bend the rules. A judge can sometimes just decide
to do things their way, either for good or ill. In that case in Montana,
the judge did just that. - Well, the prosecutors didn't
want him to appeal this. They said, look,
if you plead guilty, we'll let you get
a reduced sentence, but one of the conditions
of this is: you don't appeal the
Zone of Death issue. And he took the deal. - So there's clearly some reason for
lawmakers to worry about the Zone. But if you were planning to
do something terrible here, you'd also have to make sure you
committed only the one crime, and only here, which it turns out
is really difficult. - There's also the possibility of
being prosecuted somewhere else. For conspiracy, wire fraud,
or firearms violations or any of those things.
And there's also civil liability. You could get sued for anything
you might do there. It would be very easy to fix. All Congress has to do is
pass a statute that says "the district of Wyoming
is Wyoming". They could do that in
five minutes if they wanted to. - I did ask the obvious question:
has Professor Kalt ever visited here? And he said, well, there's this book where the Zone of Death
is part of the plot. I actually bought a copy and was
going to bring it out here, it's on my desk in my hotel room
because I forgot it. Anyway, they flew him out to the
central parts of Yellowstone, the parts that are actually in Wyoming, the pretty bits, to do some media interviews. - Someone said, do you guys wanna go out
to the Idaho portion for a photo op? And I said, hell no. I am not going to tempt the
forces of irony like that. - So let's say the worst happens. Someone comes out here,
commits a crime in the zone. As far as we know
it's never been done, but what does Professor Kalt
think would happen? - The US attorney's office in Wyoming
is not just going to roll over. But people are let go on technicalities
from time to time, and this one, at least, is actually in
the Constitution in black and white. Congress has been on notice for 18 years now.
They could have fixed it. - I am now going to leave, either before someone else decides
to commit a crime here, on me, or before I get eaten alive by mosquitos.
