A judicial no-man's land in the Idaho part of Yellowstone (2016) | Hacker News Reader

A judicial no-man's land in the Idaho part of Yellowstone (2016)

vice.com

48 pointsTomte16 comments

Up until 2015 there was a related but more consequential issue that made it extremely hard to prosecute crimes committed on reservations by non-Natives. Tribal governments couldn't prosecute non-Native offenders, instead those crimes fell under federal jurisdiction--and the federal government itself is generally uninterested in prosecuting petty crime. [1] Off-reservation offenders would deliberately go onto the reservation and target the population there because they knew that it was practically impossible for them to be prosecuted, allegedly. Native American women experience sexual violence at much, much higher rates than the general population at least in part because of the jurisdiction issues. [2] VAWA passed in 2013 though, closing the loophole as far as I'm aware. [3]

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/02/on-indi...

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/us/native-americans-strugg...

[3] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/06/vawa-native-america...

Former resident of Montana. A lot of the eastern reservations are considered no-stop zones. i.e. you better have enough gas to get through. Western reservations, not so much. Western reservations are pretty congenial and open to others. Flathead reservation strikes one point, but my high school also had a friendly rivalry with Polson (also on a reservation).

I was married to a mostly white girl (one-quarter Indian) that grew up on the Crow reservation and we visited frequently. I found the Crow reservation to be nothing like I'd heard. People were friendly to me and I could count on one hand the number of times I ever got a mean mug. At the time, my unit had just reclassed from infantry to cavalry, so I was a US Army cav scout married to a Crow Indian. Anyway, I realize it's anecdote and only one point on a graph. But people were always friendly to me and I never felt unsafe, or like I should just keep on driving.

Not a lawyer, but did go to law school. I definitely see why the author of the original paper found this interesting (and it's infinitely more interesting that 99.9% of law journal articles). I also agree that it's an arguable loophole that should be closed.

That said, there's an entire branch of law related to moving trials amongst jurisdictions, oftentimes to venues with very, very tenuous relationships to the crime. If any part of the crime took place somewhere that had an ability to seat a jury (and judges have ruled that things like purchasing an item used in the crime can qualify in some cases), the prosecutor wouldn't have much trouble getting it removed there.

Yeah, I first read this a number of years ago. It's analogous to when programmers find some exploitable corner case and go "Gotcha!" But, meanwhile, in the real world, a judge says "Nope" and finds some reason to do the sensible thing. Law isn't (and really shouldn't be in spite of sometimes bad results) a matter of applying precise algorithms.

Right, I feel like the law doesn't have loopholes for things like violent crime. Some kind of twisty scenic routes might work for cornering the market or employing dragnet surveillance on a population. But you swing a crowbar at somebody for their wallet, you're pretty much going to jail, even if you think you've got some kind of genius loophole.

Most of the time, that's true. Unfortunately, as the OJ trial demonstrates, it's not universally true.

This article opens talking about a novel in which a character commits multiple murders, confesses, and evades prosecution by being in an area with ambiguous jurisdiction.

But loopholes like this don't work, because the legal system is implemented by humans. Imagine you're a judge, and a murder suspect is arguing before you that they can't be prosecuted in your court because it's not an appropriate jurisdiction. What do you do? You ask their lawyer what would be an appropriate jurisdiction, and you don't accept "nowhere" as an answer.

This can be a problem for minor crimes, and for courts that are severely short on resources. It can be harder to find detectives willing to work a case in an area like that. But a high-profile crime solves all of those issues.

> And being federal land, the state would have no jurisdiction.

Can that be right? It still occurred within Idaho, even if it was on land owned by the federal government. I want to see a case on point before I go killing people.

It depends how you interpret this (and IANAL):

The Yellowstone National Park, as its boundaries now are defined, or as they may be hereafter defined or extended, shall be under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States. All the laws applicable to places under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States, shall have force and effect in said park. Nothing in this Act shall be construed to forbid the service in the park of any civil or criminal process of any court having jurisdiction in the States of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. All fugitives from justice taking refuge in said park shall be subject to the same laws as refugees from justice found in the State of Wyoming.

And then you also get into issues around juries, etc.

It's a unique situation (hence why it was an article). I don't actually believe anyone would get off with this sort of "technicality" but it is a real corner case.

Yeah, I saw that too. I guess I have no idea what it means to be "under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States." I wonder if that clause (or anything like it) has ever really been litigated.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-wy/criminal-division/violations...

Its a federal enclave and you get charged under federal law in the closest federal court.

Other than federal enclaves, if you are not a tribal member a lot of crimes on reservations are handled by the federal court system. You get to deal with Federal Marshals and the FBI.

I think it's probably one of those weirdo cases that makes for good movies and books but, in practice, you get arrested and the judge laughs at your creative defense and orders you remanded without bail. (And it's not even wrong because law != code.)

I mean... maybe. Judges do have a certain amount of discretion and ability to interpret. But they are also supposed to stay within the law, and not just go to "well, this seems like the right thing to do."

If a Judge wanted to ignore this and seat a jury from... where? Somewhere else in Idaho? Then they'd probably at least need to advance a theory for why they got to do that in their response to your motion.

Now, as others have pointed out, unless you could plausibly assert that the crime was wholly and totally contained within the zone of death, and you didn't plan it outside the area or purchase items with the intent to use them in the crime or so forth, there is existing precedent to use that place as a venue for the crime.

But we're talking about a Constitutional right in terms of jury seating. Judges don't get to just wave their hands and say, "Well, the Constitution is dumb, so we won't do that." If they do, it's likely to get overturned on appeal.

(I am not a lawyer; this is not legal advice; don't commit felonies)

Maybe it's not a loophole... maybe it's by design... and maybe that's why it hasn't been fixed!

/Sarcasm, but not totally

Funny. My first thought was to wonder how far this was from annual Fed hoedown in Jackson Hole.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com