In the most recent episode of the excellent podcast Divided Argument, “Watch Snobs” (June 14, 2026), at about 55 minutes, the hosts talk about an anomaly in the law where it is possible to commit murder and get away with it because of some quirks in our federal constitutional scheme. They refer to a 2005 law review article and a novel based on this issue:
Brian C. Kalt, “The Perfect Crime,” Georgetown L. J. 93, no. 2 (2005):
This article argues that there is a 50-square-mile swath of Idaho in which one might be able to commit felonies with impunity. This is because of the intersection of a poorly drafted statute with a clear but neglected constitutional provision: the Sixth Amendment’s Vicinage Clause. Although lesser criminal charges and civil liability still loom, the remaining possibility of criminals going free over a needless technical failure by Congress is difficult to stomach. No criminal defendant has ever broached the subject, let alone faced the numerous (though unconvincing) counterarguments. This shows that vicinage is not taken seriously by lawyers or judges. Still, Congress should close the Idaho loophole, not pretend it does not exist.
C. J. Box, Free Fire (A Joe Pickett Novel) (2016):
Joe Pickett’s been hired to investigate one of the most cold-blooded mass killings in Wyoming history. Attorney Clay McCann admitted to slaughtering four campers in a back-country corner of Yellowstone National Park—a “free-fire” zone with no residents or jurisdiction. In this remote fifty-square-mile stretch a man can literally get away with murder. Now McCann’s a free man, and Pickett’s about to discover his motive—one buried in Yellowstone’s rugged terrain, and as dangerous as the man who wants to keep it hidden.
Grok summary:
The “Zone of Death” in Yellowstone National Park is a real constitutional quirk where the 6th Amendment’s Vicinage Clause could make it extremely difficult (or practically impossible) to convict someone of a serious federal crime committed in a specific uninhabited area.
Why This Exists: The 6th Amendment’s Vicinage Clause
The Sixth Amendment guarantees that in a criminal prosecution, “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, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law.”
This is the Vicinage Clause (from “vicinage,” meaning neighborhood or vicinity). It requires jurors to come from both:
- The state where the crime occurred.
- The federal judicial district where the crime occurred.
Yellowstone National Park mostly lies in Wyoming but has small portions in Idaho (about 50 square miles, in the Bechler region) and Montana. Congress placed the entire park under the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming for judicial purposes. This creates a mismatch in the Idaho portion:
- The crime location (state): Idaho.
- The judicial district: Wyoming.
A trial for a crime committed in the Idaho part of the park must draw jurors from the District of Wyoming and from the state of Idaho. But that specific Idaho sliver inside the park is remote, high-elevation backcountry with no permanent residents (or at most a tiny handful, far short of the 12 needed for a jury, plus alternates).
You can’t easily pull enough eligible Idaho residents from that exact area who live in the Wyoming federal district. Wyoming residents can’t serve for the “state” part of the requirement. Result: No valid jury pool → no trial → effective impunity for serious crimes (especially federal ones tried in district court).
Simple example (based on Kalt’s analysis and the podcast discussion):
Imagine you murder someone in that 50-square-mile Idaho section of Yellowstone. Federal prosecutors charge you in the District of Wyoming. Your lawyer invokes the Vicinage Clause. The court can’t assemble 12 impartial jurors from Idaho within the Wyoming district because virtually no one lives there. The case collapses. You walk free. (Lesser crimes or state prosecutions might differ, but major federal cases hit this wall.) This isn’t “legal murder”—it’s that prosecution becomes practically impossible without a fix.
Law professor Brian Kalt highlighted this in his 2005 Georgetown Law Journal article “The Perfect Crime.” He discovered it while thinking about Sixth Amendment technicalities and urged Congress to fix the district boundaries (e.g., assign the Idaho portion to the District of Idaho). As of recent years, it remains unclosed despite attention.
How the Novel Free Fire by C.J. Box Exploits This
C.J. Box’s 2007 Joe Pickett novel Free Fire directly uses Kalt’s “Zone of Death” idea as its premise.
Plot summary (from the book’s description and discussions):
Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett investigates one of the most cold-blooded mass killings in the state’s history. Attorney Clay McCann openly admits to slaughtering four campers in a remote backcountry corner of Yellowstone—the “free-fire zone” (the Idaho portion with no residents or practical jurisdiction). Because of the legal loophole, McCann cannot be successfully prosecuted; he is released as a free man.
Pickett is hired to dig into McCann’s motive, which ties into secrets buried in Yellowstone’s rugged terrain. The story explores the dangers of the man who wants to keep those secrets hidden, blending thriller elements with the real-world jurisdictional anomaly. Box uses the premise to insert Pickett into the park and highlight how this constitutional oversight creates a place where someone can literally get away with murder—until Pickett uncovers the truth.
The novel popularized the concept (even alerting some lawmakers) and shows a character deliberately exploiting the loophole for a calculated mass killing, knowing the vicinage issue will shield him from conviction. It’s a fictional “perfect crime” scenario inspired directly by Kalt’s article.
This situation underscores how even well-intentioned constitutional protections can create unintended gaps when geography and district lines don’t align perfectly—especially in vast, sparsely populated federal lands. Kalt intended his article as a call to fix it, not an invitation, but it remains a fascinating (and unsettling) example of law meeting wilderness. For your blog post, this provides a great hook: real constitutional law enabling a thriller plot.
Transcript from “Watch Snobs“
Speaker 4 • 55:10
Are you going to Yellowstone on your vacation?
Speaker 3 • 55:13
Uh no, but are you gonna talk about the perfect crime?
Speaker 4 • 55:16
Uh yes, aka the the zone of death, right, which is there’s this one part of Yellowstone National Park. which basically because of the Vicenage Clause, you know, makes it like impossible to convict the person of a crime.
Speaker 3 • 55:34
Yes, because it’s one of the Yellowstone is one of the only places where the line the district lines don’t run along state lines. So the district of Yellowstone is all one jullie district, even though pieces of it spill over outside of Wyoming into Idaho and Montana.
Speaker 4 • 55:50
So yes. So if you commit a crime within the area of Idaho that is within in the part of the park that’s in Idaho, but that’s still within the district of Wyoming, you would have to find jurors who lived in Idaho in the district. And there’s nobody who lives there. Right.
Speaker 3 • 56:10
Or at least there are not twelve people. There’s some point when I thought we maybe one or two people live there, but not enough to form a jury.
Speaker 4 • 56:15
Yeah.
Speaker 3 • 56:16
Right, ’cause it there are enough people who live in the district of Wyoming and in the state of Wyoming that in the Wyoming part you can easily do it Yeah, but in the overlap, in the fifty square mile swath of Idaho, you can’t feel the jury. This is an article by Brian Colt called The Perfect Crime, 2005 George Tanalogna. Great article.
Speaker 4 • 56:35
As well as the uh the subject of uh a novel called Free Fire. I read the description of that novel, the kind of backcover of that novel to my Krimpro students when I talk about this. Oh.
Speaker 3 • 56:47
Is it good?
Speaker 4 • 56:48
Is the novel good? I I haven’t read the novel. I just read the description on the back. It does not sound good at all. It sounds amazing. I mean it sounds like a cool premise.
Speaker 3 • 56:58
I’m gonna order it as soon as we’re off the show. I’m gonna take it on vacation.
Speaker 4 • 57:02
Are are you? Yeah, totally. Why don’t I read you the description and see if you still agree with that? Joe Pickett’s been hired to investigate one of the most cold-blooded mass killings in Wyoming history. Attorney Clay McCann admitted to slaughtering four campers in a backcountry corner of Yellowstone National Park, a free fire zone with no residence or jurisdiction. In this remote fifty square mile stretch a man can literally get away with murder. Now McCann’s a free man, and Pickett’s about discur about to discover his motive, one buried in Yellowstone’s rugged terrain, and as dangerous as the man who wants to keep it hidden. Combelling?
Speaker 3 • 57:40
But that means he’s read the article. This is about this legal loophole, right?
Speaker 4 • 57:43
Yes. Yes. That’s my understanding. Again, I haven’t read it, but that is my understanding. And that is what Wikipedia says. Okay, well you’re gonna read it. It’s 432 pages. You’re gonna report back on our next post-vacation episode. I’m gonna I’m gonna take that. Uh I’m gonna you were you were stopped from doing otherwise.
