Brian Kalt says there is a hole in the Sixth Amendment big enough to run a crime spree through. Kalt is an associate professor at Michigan State Law School, and he has written an article for the Georgetown Law Journal called The Perfect Crime. It's an article that springs both from his study of constitutional law and, he says, his daydreaming.
Professor Kalt, the perfect crime, I gather, could be committed in a specific place.
Professor BRIAN KALT (Michigan State Law School): Yes. There's a small portion of Yellowstone National Park that spills over the Wyoming border into Idaho and another small part that's in Montana that would create an almost perfect crime.
SIEGEL: Now what is so special about, we'll say, the non-Wyoming portions of Yellowstone Park?
Prof. KALT: Well, the problem is that the federal District Court for the District of Wyoming is defined as including all of Yellowstone Park, including that 50-square-mile swath of Idaho. And the Sixth Amendment requires that when a crime is committed, that the jury be drawn from the state and district where the crime was committed. And the trial is supposed to be in the state where the crime was committed. So if you commit a crime in the Idaho portion of Yellowstone National Park, the jury should be drawn from among the ranks of Idahoans but also from the District of Wyoming. And unfortunately the population of that area is zero.
