A 50-square-mile slice of Yellowstone National Park inside Idaho sits in a legal blind spot where a major felony may be impossible to prosecute. This episode explains how it happened: Yellowstone is a federal enclave established in 1872, and when Wyoming gained statehood in 1890, Congress placed the entire park under the District of Wyoming, the only federal district court spanning multiple states. Combined with Article III and the Sixth Amendment, which require a jury drawn from both the state and district where the crime occurred, that leaves a jury pool of zero people.

Law professor Brian Kalt uncovered the problem in 2004 while stress-testing the Sixth Amendment and published The Perfect Crime in the Georgetown Law Journal to force Congress to act. The episode covers why the loophole is far narrower than internet lore suggests, the elk  ...