Zone of Death (Yellowstone)
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
If you have planned the murder with someone else, that is a conspiracy, which is a serious crime in itself. You don't even need to attempt the murder.
If you were just premeditating in your own mind, that is not a crime. Though it might be a factor in sentencing for the actual crime.
If the premeditation involves writing down plans with maps etc, then... I haven't listened to that episode yet.
Just add a preface: "Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental."
How would a conviction take place without a jury? Even in the Belderrain case in the Montana section of the park, a jury was never formed; there was only an initial ruling that a trial could move forward despite the risk of partiality, but the case was settled with a plea agreement where the defendant waived any right to pursuing the Zone of Death legal challenge.
(can an attorney fact-check me here, by the way? I'm definitely not one)
I believe the parent's point was that it could take place with a jury from anywhere else, thereby violating the letter of the 6th amendment, but without this having an effect: The convicted person would have to appeal the conviction, but no higher court would decide to hear the appeal.
(I'm not a lawyer either, I'm just writing down my understanding of what the parent said.)
While this sounds dystopian, it is probably actually preferable to a state that enforces all of its laws to the letter.
Rules have never stopped a "bad person" from doing something.
Rules aren't made to keep the "bad person out";
they're made to keep the "good people in".
Judges especially Federal judges are far less impressed by "hacks" and "loopholes" of the system, than most programmers.
There is no chance they will let a premeditated murder go unpunished on the basis of some obscure technicality like this.
Seriously. If they're completely capricious, what good are they?
So why not change the law when there's an obvious loophole?
I expect the answer with this sort of thing is that there are a lot of people in Congress who would roll their eyes and say that they have better things to do than screw around with some weird legal edge case that has basically never actually been a problem. And they're not necessarily wrong.
What's even more damning is that there's no interest in resolving the contradiction. If this had been discovered during a murder trial where there was overwhelming evidence of guilt, and simply a jurisdiction loophole, I'd be sympathetic to saying "let's just sweep it under the rug". But if it's known and the response is simply "eh, well if it happens we'll just ignore the constitution because 'common law'", that really reduces my respect for what the law is.
Laws are just a facade to legitimize, in the eyes of the populace, the state enforcing its will.
The state writes the laws in their own interest so that the majority of the time it serves them to remain within legal bounds. And the majority of the times a state violates its own laws are not made public until years later, if at all, negating public outcry. In this way the citizenry remains placid and is willing to overlook the few events in which a state publicly flouts the law.
"Death" is just related to one of the possible crimes that would be problematic to prosecute.
But even so, the way plea deals work a defendant would have to be quite idealistic or dumb to go to trial with that as a sole defense.
This is the only time in history when a headline like "Yellowstone's one weird trick they don't want you to know" would actually be kind of true.
Secondly, incorporation doctrine has made a giant mess of everything, especially the second amendment. It does need to be read in conjunction with the Militia clause in article 1 and you need to keep in mind the intent was to keep a small army but a powerful militia. Militia refers to every man capable of fighting. In federalist fashion, congress got to set standards but the states executed them. The second amendment was a minimum training standard that said congress couldn't abuse its power by enacting gun control because if they did, we'd have no militia to defend the nation which would be a perverse outcome. But basically the federal government has the (curiously unused) power to regulate the training of the militia. Part of that could plausibly include restrictions on how the militia is trained on certain weapons. Hence, to bear a WMD congress could require you to serve one weekend a month, two weeks a year if you get my drift.
Yes. But Congress has levied no such requirement. And absent any such requirement I should be able to successfully argue that if my right to bear arms extends to a Glock then there can be no Constitutional basis for arguing that it should not extend to a nuke.
My point is no one even attempts to make that argument because everyone knows it would get shot down on some obscure legal pretext because when push comes to shove no one is really a textualist or an originalist. It's all subtlety and nuance and interpretation and, ultimately, politics, even among people who insist that it is not.
As for the court's power to overrule, and to a certain extent, create law, that goes back to English common law and predates the US Constitution significantly.
The focus on murder ignores all of the other crimes you could commit like illegal logging, wildcat mining, or endangered species poaching.
One complication is that if you have a permanent crime facility there, like a meth lab, the FBI can just go there and kill you.
> In all criminal prosecutions, 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 [...]
There have been lots of legal disputes about the "impartial" part and the procedures for jury selection (leading to a whole body of custom and caselaw about it). I imagine that would be a contentious angle in your plan, because people who knowingly moved specifically in order to be eligible to serve on a jury for a particular trial might not appear entirely "impartial" in that case. (Of course, I'm not sure which way that issue would go.)
I would never suggest that a government physically do this. Rather, the possibility would be an argument against the idea that jury trials are impossible per se. A reviewing court would outline some compromised procedure to select a jury, something short of physically getting people to move.
Yes, what I'm describing is illegal, but how would your prosecute it?
[0] https://jonnyquest.fandom.com/wiki/The_Edge_of_Yesterday?fil...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_jurisdiction#Austral...
> Another possibility is for prosecutors to concentrate on lesser offenses - those with maximum sentences of six months or less - that do not require a jury trial. Again, these misdemeanors may be lesser charges than the ones to which you would be subject in other districts, but they are better than nothing, they will dissuade some criminals, and, most important, they can be prosecuted constitutionally.
And also that if you actually committed a very serious crime, it's very likely you committed some other crime along the way while outside of the "zone of death", conspiracy, firearm violation, or something.
This (and countless other actions) show how meaningless laws are as anything but an arbitrary threat of force. Governments and other organizations that make laws don't consider themselves bound by them, and why should they? They are institutions of force, not reason. An accusation of hypocrisy does nothing against a gun.
For the most part it isn't an issue because, as previously noted, nobody lives there. There is nobody around to commit crimes. There is also precious little there to commit crimes against. If this loophole ever actually came up I'd expect it to be over something like illegal logging, not a murder.
The issue here is that because all of Yellowstone is in the federal district of Wyoming--including the parts that aren't in Wyoming, you'd need someone who lived in the federal district of Wyoming and the state district of Idaho to sit on a jury. That's a null set.
Not suggesting any shady services be located there, just sayin'
Ripping off the tag is perfectly legal as long as you eat it.