America's most iconic national park harbors a disturbing legal loophole.
A law professor discovered it two decades ago and tried to sound the alarm.
And Yellowstone has one deadly secret that Congress has been hiding for 20 years.
Law professor found the loophole by accident
Michigan State University law professor Brian Kalt was researching the Sixth Amendment back in 2005 when he stumbled on something strange.
He wondered if there was any place in America where you couldn't form a jury because nobody lived there.
Turns out there is: a 50-square-mile section of Yellowstone National Park in Idaho.
The Sixth Amendment says criminal defendants get tried by juries from the state and district where crimes happened.¹
That Idaho slice of Yellowstone has exactly zero residents — just grizzly bears, elk, and lodgepole pine forests.
No people means no jury pool, which means potentially no way to prosecute major crimes.
Kalt was horrified by what he'd found.
He published "The Perfect Crime" in the Georgetown Law Journal hoping Congress would fix it.²
"Crime is bad, after all," Kalt wrote. "But so is violating the Constitution. If the loophole described in this essay does exist it should be closed, not ignored."³
Before publishing, Kalt contacted the Department of Justice, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Wyoming, and several members of Congress.
He figured it would be simple: just redraw the district lines to put that Idaho section under the District of Idaho instead of Wyoming.
Twenty years later, Congress still hasn't done it.
Congress ignored the fix even when Idaho begged them
The loophole exists because of how Congress set up Yellowstone back in 1872.
The park became America's first national park before Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana were even states.
When Congress later established federal courts, they put the entire park under Wyoming's District Court.⁴
Most of Yellowstone sits in Wyoming, but small portions extend into Montana and Idaho.
Wyoming became the only federal district court in the country that includes parts of other states.
The Idaho portion is completely uninhabited and nearly impossible to access.
No roads lead there, hiking trails are overgrown, and it's one of the most remote areas in the American West.
If someone committed murder there, they'd need a jury from people who live in Idaho AND fall under Wyoming's federal jurisdiction.
That jury can't exist because nobody lives there.
Idaho tried forcing Congress's hand in 2022.
Representative Colin Nash sponsored a resolution asking Congress to close the loophole.⁵
The Idaho legislature passed it and sent it to Washington, D.C.
When another lawmaker asked if Congress would actually do anything, Nash could only say "We can try our darnedest" — which got rueful laughter from the room.⁶
Congress never acted.
"There has been no movement on the issue, even with the Idaho Legislature's resolution," Kalt told reporters this week.⁷
One poacher tested the theory and prosecutors chickened out
In December 2005, Michael Belderrain illegally shot an elk in the Montana section of Yellowstone.
His lawyers tried using Kalt's theory to get the charges thrown out.⁸
The judge didn't buy it, but prosecutors got nervous anyway.
They offered Belderrain a plea deal with one condition: he couldn't appeal the constitutional question.
He took the reduced sentence and the loophole stayed untested.
"They should have been able to address it there but other than that there have been no cases," Kalt said. "There's been a lot of speculation but nothing in real life. Thank goodness."⁹
No confirmed murders have happened in the Zone of Death since Kalt discovered it.
But high-profile disappearances near Yellowstone keep raising questions.
When Gabby Petito vanished near the park in 2021, social media exploded with theories about the Zone of Death.
Her body was found in the Wyoming portion of the park, not the problematic Idaho section.
The Vallow children's disappearance raised similar concerns when evidence showed they'd entered Yellowstone with their mother.
Their bodies were found buried in Idaho, but outside the federal Zone of Death.
The fix remains simple but Congress won't bother
Yellowstone draws millions of visitors annually and generates $1.8 billion in economic activity.¹⁰
The remote Idaho section sees almost no visitors, but the loophole affects the entire park's reputation.
Congress could fix this in an afternoon.
Just pass legislation moving Idaho's portion of Yellowstone into the District of Idaho.
No constitutional amendment needed, just a few lines changing which court has jurisdiction.
Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi briefly paid attention after novelist C.J. Box published "Free Fire" in 2007, which featured the Zone of Death.
But Enzi couldn't convince his colleagues to care.
"I still think that Congress should fix it," Kalt said this week. "I do think, however, that the danger is often sensationalized and misstated."¹¹
When Kalt first contacted the Department of Justice in 2005, they told him they had "no power to amend the law."
Most other officials never bothered responding.
Kalt believes Congress won't act "until a defendant uses the loophole to get away with a crime."¹²
The Zone of Death remains America's strangest legal quirk.
And Congress apparently needs an actual murder before they'll spend an afternoon fixing a problem they've known about for twenty years.
¹ U.S. Constitution, Sixth Amendment.
² Brian C. Kalt, "The Perfect Crime," Georgetown Law Journal, 2005.
³ Ibid.
⁴ Brian C. Kalt, "The Perfect Crime," Georgetown Law Journal, 2005.
⁵ "Idaho legislator asks U.S. Congress to close Yellowstone's 'zone of death' loophole," Idaho Capital Sun, February 4, 2022.
⁶ "Lawmaker wants federal fix to Yellowstone's 'zone of death' legal loophole," CBS News, February 4, 2022.
⁷ "'Zone of Death': Yellowstone's 50-square-mile legal loophole," SFGate, November 9, 2025.
⁸ "Zone of Death (Yellowstone)," Wikipedia, November 10, 2025.
⁹ "'Zone of Death' where you could get away with murder," The Sun, May 5, 2025.
¹⁰ "Yellowstone's 'Zone of Death': Could You Really Get Away," USConstitution.net, 2025.
¹¹ "Yellowstone National Park's 'Zone Of Death' Remains Unattended," TheTravel, November 11, 2025.
¹² "'Zone of Death': Yellowstone's 50-square-mile legal loophole," SFGate, November 9, 2025.
