Zone of Death (Yellowstone)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_Death_(Yellowstone)

by mikpanko • 3 years ago

35 11 3 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

bhaney• 3 years ago

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.

Realistically, this is all that's going to happen if/when anyone commits a serious crime in one of these loophole zones. The court isn't just going to throw up its hands and say "you got us" to a murderer.

anon291• 3 years ago

'law is not code' is a simple phrase that consistently seems to escape most HN users.

twelve402• 3 years ago

It surely escapes me. What does it mean?

twelve402• 3 years ago

well he did cut a deal for himself. I wonder if it was serious enough he could have pressed it further.

qingcharles• 3 years ago

You're wrong. IANAL, but I've spent thousands of hours in criminal court. The courts regularly dismiss murder cases on constitutional grounds, despite the murderer having clearly committed the murder.

I would say murders are the most dismissed cases, simply because most other crimes end in plea deals, whereas a lot of murders are taken to trial because the sentence differential between the plea deal (which might be say, 20 years on a murder) vs. the likely sentence following a jury trial (which might be say, 30 years) is irrelevant because both are pretty much life sentences and defendants would rather try their luck at spending 10 years in a pretrial detention facility to fight the case and win on say a constitutional violation.

8organicbits• 3 years ago

I think the next sentence is what really had impact:

Belderrain took a plea deal conditioned such that he would not appeal the Zone of Death issue to the 10th Circuit, rendering the issue moot, at least for the time being.

The whole story is a little hard to track. As far as I can tell he killed multiple elk in 2005 and left at least one of them headless in Yellowstone which was quickly discovered. A month later the Government found it's head in a taxidermy shop. He then signed the plea deal for poaching the elk waiving his right to claim the Zone of Death issue, but critically didn't mention his connection to the head. After the plea deal was signed, the Government linked the head to the body via DNA testing. Since this was "new information" it wasn't covered by the plea deal and he was convicted based on this evidence. He appealed to the 10th Circuit, claiming that the Government breached the plea deal by charging him for the elk, but the Government claimed the head was a separate crime and that his previous lies caused the Government to not suspect that link. The court sided with the Government. He got at least four years of jail, three years of probation, and some fines.

This is a good reminder to always describe the fullest extent of your crimes in a plea deal. Any omission, even accidental, can be spun into a new charge if new information surfaces.

[1] https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/0...

[2] https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/yellowstone-elk-p...

Zone of Death (Yellowstone)

Related Stories