National parks are federal enclaves and state courts have no jurisdiction to hear cases arising in them. You are thinking of situations where the state and federal governments have concurrent jurisdiction, like the murder of a federal employee.
“I haven’t actually looked this up, but it sounds ridiculous so I disagree” is not a very GQ answer. Read Kalt’s paper. It’s quite convincing. Kalt is not talking about all of Yellowstone. He is talking strictly about the 50 square miles that fall within the boundaries of Idaho, but for obscure historical reasons are part of the Wyoming federal district.
I don’t know Brian Kalt but I’m going to speculate he intended his article more as amusement for its readers than as an attempt to address a serious legal issue.
This loophole sounds like a defense attorney’s dream come true. Don’t many lawyers actually get a kick out of winning a case based on a technicality - the more infuriating and face-palming the technicality, the better?
I can only speak for myself, and my practice is civil rather than criminal, but I’d never recommend taking a case to trial if our only defenses are technical ones. Judges don’t like ruling based on hyper-technical arguments; they prefer to be able to rule consistent with both the spirit and the letter of the law.
[del]Damn![/del]. Nothing could have been further from my thoughts but if you won’t come I’ll be thinking of you as I [del] push the next on the list off the top of the cliff[/del] sit peacefully admiring the grand vista before me.
I would say instead that there is case law in which a jury drawn solely from the district in which the case was tried was found to be sufficient to satisfy the Vicinage Clause, without establishing that it is necessary (simply because the question has not yet arisen).
None at all? So if in my state “mopery” is a misdemeanor and “aggravated mopery” is a felony, but neither are federal offences, I can commit them flagrantly in my local National Park without fear of prosecution? Or, do federal courts have jurisdiction over state crimes in a National Park? How do appeals work?
Yes, but there are plenty of people who just “disappear.” Plenty of people have died from exposure after getting lost while hiking, or were attacked by bears, or fell into acidic pools, etc. If no bodies are found, it could be hard to prove it wasn’t an accident.
I tried to Google it, but the only results I kept getting back were related to the “murder zone”.
So now I know not to vacation with the wife in Yellowstone.
Yes to the first question, except in California, which reserved some jurisdiction over its parks when it ceded the land to the federal government. Only federal law applies in other national parks; they’re like the District of Columbia except without municipal laws.
There are no “state crimes” in a national park, so nobody has jurisdiction over such crimes.
Appeals work as they do elsewhere in the federal system; there is an appeal as a matter of right to the applicable federal circuit, plus a discretionary appeal to SCOTUS.
My usual answer to this loophole is that that sliver of land is not, in fact, unpopulated. It’s just unpopulated by humans. So you just find twelve grizzly bears living in that sliver of land, and empanel them.
“Your honor, we find the defendant guilty by virtue of looking delicious.”
Like most things in law, there is no definitive reply. Suppose in 2010 you asked, “Is same sex marriage a right granted by the Constitution?” You would have read a bunch of arguments about it and finally the answer turned out to be “Yes” as five learned Justices on the Supreme Court believed it was while only four learned Justices believed it was not.
This question is a similar one that has compelling arguments on each side, many of which have been raised in this thread.
Well it seems Kalt has actually written to members of congress seriously suggesting that congress takes action to solve this so I’m guessing it wasn’t just for amusement.
