[HN Gopher] Zone of Death (Yellowstone)
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Zone of Death (Yellowstone)
Author : yawz
Score : 82 points
Date : 2021-02-01 19:15 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| arithmomachist wrote:
| I'm a little surprised no one has fought a duel there.
| proverbialbunny wrote:
| Duels are legal in a lot of the US, so not really necessary.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Let's assume a court convicted someone of murder within this
| zone. Let's also assume the evidence was overwhelming and the act
| was premeditated because the murderer had knowledge of the Sixth
| Amendment and this loophole. The case makes it's way to the
| Supreme Court. But because of the bizarre nature of the loophole
| SCOTUS simply chooses not to hear appeal and lets the conviction
| stand. This is how the law could be enforced while technically
| violating the Sixth Amendment.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| If it's premeditated, it has likely been premeditated somewhere
| else. If so, isn't the premeditation in itself a crime for
| which you could be prosecuted (in the place where you planned
| everything).
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I'm not a lawyer, but I've listened to several podcasts!
|
| 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.
| lqet wrote:
| > If the premeditation involves writing down plans with
| maps etc, then...
|
| Just add a preface: "Any resemblance to actual persons,
| living or dead, events, or locales is entirely
| coincidental."
| jackhalford wrote:
| So technically the planning and premeditation also needs to
| be done in the death zone.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Ummm, no. While premeditation enhances the murder charge and
| mens rea is a very important legal concept, thoughts are not
| crimes.
| saluki wrote:
| Until we have PreCrime.
| anamexis wrote:
| If they told someone else about it before hand, could it be
| conspiracy?
| MrZongle2 wrote:
| Not _yet_.
| eganist wrote:
| > Let's assume a court convicted someone of murder within this
| zone. Let's also assume the evidence was overwhelming and the
| act was premeditated because the murderer had knowledge of the
| Sixth Amendment and this loophole. The case makes it's way to
| the Supreme Court. But because of the bizarre nature of the
| loophole SCOTUS simply chooses not to hear appeal and lets the
| conviction stand. This is how the law could be enforced while
| technically violating the Sixth Amendment.
|
| 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)
| [deleted]
| sandworm101 wrote:
| There is another loophole to this loophole. Yes, there is a
| requirement that the jury come from people who live in the area,
| but that does not extend to saying that they have to have been
| living there _at the time of the crime_. If push comes to shove,
| the government can probably arrange to have a sufficient jury
| pool move into the area prior to jury selection. It would be a
| comically expensive thing to do but possible.
| [deleted]
| schoen wrote:
| The amendment says
|
| > 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.)
| sandworm101 wrote:
| That would indeed be a problem. Creating an army base in the
| area and just dumping a bunch of soldiers would not work. The
| government would have to "move" people naturally, by perhaps
| founding a town and incentivizing investment to draw people
| it. Ludicrously expensive, but possible even within the
| "speedy trial" timeframe.
|
| 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.
| SahAssar wrote:
| Wouldn't that be jury tampering?
| ballenf wrote:
| Such a terrible moniker for this swath of land where assembling a
| jury for a criminal trial would be difficult if not impossible.
|
| "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.
| jetpackjoe wrote:
| In theory, this would never get to trial.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| In practice, I would be surprised if any court up to and
| including the Supreme Court would find this loophole an
| acceptable defense. It could certainly be a long complicated
| legal battle, but ultimately, I doubt the Supreme Court would
| find that the intent of the Sixth Amendment was to allow
| criminals to go free in this situation.
| lisper wrote:
| They don't have to find it an acceptable defense, all they
| would have to do is find that it is not possible to legally
| try the suspect. Which is in fact the case. But of course
| they would try him anyway because doing end-runs around the
| text of the Constitution is standard operating procedure
| and has been since the founding. Even the whole idea of the
| Supreme Court having the power to declare laws
| unconstitutional is found nowhere in the Constitution. That
| was a power invented by the Supreme Court in Marbury v
| Madison. There are many other examples. On a strict textual
| reading of the Constitution, if the second amendment
| applies to an individual right to bear arms (which is
| debatable, but that's what the Supreme Court has most
| recently held) there is no basis for denying individuals
| the right to have WMDs. There is no basis for making
| slander and libel crimes under the First Amendment, but we
| do, and no one argues with it. Likewise, if someone
| committed murder in the "death zone" they would be tried
| somewhere and convicted and the Supreme Court would simply
| refuse to hear the appeal. And that would be that.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| The constitution is not a suicide pact; that is the whole
| reason for the judiciary: to interpret laws. I would be
| very surprised if any reasonable lawyer (never mind a
| judge) read the Sixth Amendment and concluded that it was
| the framers' intent that people could not legally be
| prosecuted if they committed a crime in such a region.
|
| 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| There was a prior case where a guy shot an elk in this
| area and he raised this "bug" with the judge. But he
| ultimately got a plea deal with the agreement that he
| wouldn't appeal. So it's not totally ridiculous but
| presumably the combination of I imagine the plea not
| being too onerous and at least some fear he could lose
| made it not worth pursuing.
| arcbyte wrote:
| Two things to augment your explanation of the first and
| second amendments. Firstly, the first amendment
| guarantees "the incorporation freedom of speech", and not
| "the freedom of any speach" which sounds arbitrary but
| isn't when you remember so much of the constitution is
| meant to carry forward existing British and colonial
| traditions. If we were free to say it in 1789 we're free
| to say it now. We aren't free to say anything we please,
| but the limits are very very wide.
|
| 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.
| lisper wrote:
| > 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| I suspect that a lot of technical people look at this and
| say "Yup. It's a bug and nothing to be done about it unless
| it's patched." Whereas, as you say, the reality is probably
| that judges up and down the line say "Nope. You're not
| getting away with it" and/or prosecutors figure out ways to
| charge the person in a different jurisdiction.
| throwaway-death wrote:
| They would just threaten to destroy your life of you don't
| take a plea deal that says you can't appeal, as they have
| already done according to the article. There is no rule of
| law in the US.
|
| Plea deals can prevent appeals and legal arguments just as
| they can prevent trials.
| warent wrote:
| maybe the outlier here, I didn't read the word "death" in a
| literal sense. To me it just came across as symbolic of crime,
| chaos, destruction, etc
| jandrese wrote:
| It does seem like a bad name. Anarchy Zone might better capture
| the predicament. Or simply Lawless Zone.
|
| The focus on murder ignores all of the other crimes you could
| commit like illegal logging, wildcat mining, or endangered
| species poaching.
| [deleted]
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Depending of what crime you commit, you could still be
| prosecuted... in another country where the principle of
| _universal juridiction_[1] applies.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_jurisdiction#Austral...
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| The original paper (reference 6 on the wiki page) also mentions
| they could still constitutionally get you for a misdemeanor
|
| > 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.
| fedreserved wrote:
| A year max for murder. I could do that standing on my head
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > A federal judge ruled that Belderrain could be tried in the
| U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming, despite the
| Sixth Amendment problem. Belderrain cited Kalt's paper "The
| Perfect Crime" to explain why he believed it was illegal to have
| his trial with a jury from a state other than where the crime was
| committed. The court dismissed this argument.
|
| 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.
| MegaButts wrote:
| Then why do we even have laws?
|
| Seriously. If they're completely capricious, what good are
| they?
| jcranmer wrote:
| They're not completely capricious. Laws don't operate under
| the confines of a strict propositional calculus: you don't
| follow strict axiomatic derivations to a contradiction and
| declare yourself finished. Instead, it operates generally on
| a basis that cases with facts in common should have the same
| decision (hence the name "common law"). And the law is
| written with this process in mind: if legislators don't like
| the judicial interpretation of their text, _they can change
| it by changing the law_.
| MegaButts wrote:
| I get that they can change the law. But instead of changing
| the law, they gave him a plea deal on the condition he
| didn't contest it at a higher court.
|
| So why not change the law when there's an obvious loophole?
| ghaff wrote:
| According to the article, at one point the Wyoming
| senator did try to get it changed but no one was
| interested.
|
| 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.
| ahepp wrote:
| I mean, I know laws can be interpreted. But we're talking
| about what seems like a pretty straightforward section of
| the constitution.
|
| 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.
| pinipedman wrote:
| The purpose of a legal system is not preventing people from
| doing things deemed illegal. Its purpose is the maintenance
| and expansion of state power. Laws are not designed for your
| benefit. If you benefit from a law that is merely incidental.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| pixelbreaker wrote:
| I've cycled through here when racing Tour Divide (I think it just
| goes through the bottom of the zone). I should have murdered all
| the other racers.
| pixelbreaker wrote:
| Oh, the route went along Grassy Lake Rd just south of the zone.
| Shame. Or rather, lucky I didn't execute my plan.
| xwdv wrote:
| It's like a real life PVP zone.
| 8732698216 wrote:
| > No known felonies have been committed in the Zone of Death
| since Kalt's discovery. However, a poacher named Michael
| Belderrain illegally shot an elk in the Montana section of
| Yellowstone. While that section of the park does have enough
| residents to form a jury, it might be difficult to put together a
| standing and fair one due to travel or unwillingness of members
| of the small population there to serve. A federal judge ruled
| that Belderrain could be tried in the U.S. District Court for the
| District of Wyoming, despite the Sixth Amendment problem.
| Belderrain cited Kalt's paper "The Perfect Crime" to explain why
| he believed it was illegal to have his trial with a jury from a
| state other than where the crime was committed. The court
| dismissed this argument. Belderrain took a plea deal conditioned
| on him not appealing the Zone of Death issue to the 10th Circuit,
| and the issue was left unresolved.
|
| 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.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Surely there are more interesting crimes than murder to use such
| an area for?
|
| 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.
| dnautics wrote:
| How about an unattended online gambling server?
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| I think technical people are fascinated by this zone because we
| like rules and thus anything that has a unique set of rules is
| interesting. The reality, though, is that legislation isn't code,
| the Constitution is violated all the time, and most legal codes
| are more like suggestions.
|
| While this sounds dystopian, it is probably actually preferable
| to a state that enforces all of its laws to the letter.
| oso2k wrote:
| Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes: 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".
|
| I wish I knew who originated it. I can't seem to recall where I
| heard it now.
| throwaway-death wrote:
| Zone of Death is a very strange name for it, especially
| considering there are zero documented cases of death or violence
| there. I reckon criminal prosecutions have taken many more lives
| than they have saved. I propose renaming it to Zone of Life.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| This name will be more descriptive when Yellowstone erupts in
| 1,000's of years in the future.
| paulsutter wrote:
| SpaceX's Starlink means that high speed internet is possible in
| even this remote area.....
|
| Not suggesting any shady services be located there, just sayin'
| FreakyT wrote:
| Time to commit the unforgivable crime of virtualizing macOS on
| a non-Mac host!
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Or pulling off the mattress tag that specifically says it's a
| crime to do so!
| marshray wrote:
| That's why it always says "Except by the consumer."
|
| Ripping off the tag is perfectly legal as long as you eat
| it.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| So if a supervillain was to try to trigger a massive eruption
| within the Yellowstone Caldera by detonating a weapon inside [0],
| they could drill to it via the Zone of Death?
|
| [0]
| https://jonnyquest.fandom.com/wiki/The_Edge_of_Yesterday?fil...
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Yes, but a crack team consisting of James Bond, Jason Bourne,
| Jack Bauer, and Joe Biden could go in and kill the supervillain
| without any legal repercussions.
| DougN7 wrote:
| How is this different from a crime that happens in the middle of
| nowhere somewhere else? There are lots of places with no
| inhabitants and no courts.
| pfarrell wrote:
| IANAL. The loophole purports to originate from the federal
| juries needing to be made of people from the federal district
| _and_ state. Presumably, all the sparsely populated places are
| restricted to a single state and contained in federal court
| districts large enough to include enough people to assemble a
| jury.
| jandrese wrote:
| This is a little different than for example the deep ocean
| where nobody has jurisdiction. In this case the Federal
| Government has jurisdiction, but due to a quirk of the laws
| would be impossible to prosecute someone for a crime committed
| there.
|
| 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| However, if the areas are sparsely inhabited both the federal
| and the state districts are correspondingly large. You'd never
| have an entire district that people don't live in even if large
| areas of the district have no inhabitants or courts.
|
| 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.
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(page generated 2021-02-02 23:02 UTC)