When I was in college,
I Learned about something called the zone of death,
a 50 square mile section of Yellowstone National Park in Idaho
where one could theoretically
get away with murder
through a series of legal and constitutional loopholes.
Now, while the law here is very clear
that you should be able to get away with literally
any crime committed in this area,
I'd imagine that any judge worth their salt
would immediately dismiss the zone of death argument altogether
should this ever actually happen.
Because it's ridiculous to assume that you'd be able to get away with
literally anything
just because of where you happened to commit the crime.
Surely we'd never allow something that absurd to actually happen.
Well, it turns out there is a very real zone of death in this country.
That's not at all hypothetical.
You see, if I committed a crime where I am right now in Sedona,
Arizona, I would be tried either by the state of Arizona
or by the federal government,
depending on the crime itself and its severity.
If, however,
before committing that crime,
I decided to take a 90 minute drive north,
I likely would not be tried at all
because that point I would be on the Navajo Nation reservation.
Now, Native American reservations throughout the country
are largely autonomous,
which means that I should be tried by the tribal courts instead.
Except these tribal courts are not allowed to prosecute me
because I am not Native. You might not think that that should matter,
but in 1978, the US Supreme Court ruled
that these tribal courts had no jurisdiction over non native people.
None whatsoever.
Forget having the case thrown out through some Saul Goodman loophole.
The case would never even start.
I couldn't be tried, charged,
arrested, or even detained in most circumstances.
These tribal courts could not touch me.
Now, you might assume that this would just mean
that the jurisdiction would just fall on the federal government,
but this assumes
that the federal government actually accepts the case itself.
The overwhelming majority of the time,
they just don't.
Over two thirds of sexual violence cases against Native American women
that are sent to the FBI or the US Attorney's offices
are just rejected. Now,
this is not just some constitutional quirk
that a Reddit thread stumbled upon.
This has had vast consequences for Native American communities.
There is now, for lack of a better term,
an epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women
across this country. There are over 5,000 indigenous women and girls
missing across the United States
right now. Violence against these communities
are far higher than the national average,
sometimes by a factor of 10.
And Native American women are the only group of people in this country
to be primarily victimized by a race other than their own.
This has gotten significantly worse in recent years
as transient oil workers have migrated through these communities,
making their interactions with These Native Americans.
All but inevitable. These people can act with the utmost impunity.
These are people who literally live on the reservations themselves.
But still, they cannot be tried by those reservations.
I thought the zone of death was just a quirky little factoid,
something interesting to share to friends,
to the intellectually curious.
But it turns out there already is a zone of death for many.
This isn't hypothetical. For these communities,
the zone of death is already happening.