united-states jurisdiction
Who prosecutes a crime if it&#39;s impossible to tell which state the crime took place in?
<p>Let's say that I go out on a fun hiking expedition with this nice <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donner_Party" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Donner family</a> and we get lost in the woods that reside on the state line between states A and B.  After a few days of wondering in circles without food were all pretty hungry and so we decide to kill Bob and eat him (no one liked Bob anyways!).  Because we have been lost for so long we don't know where we are, or on which side of the state line we reside.</p>

<p>Eventually the few well fed folks that were faster with an Axe than their lunch finally figure out how to read a map and make their way out of the woods.  They decide they're sick of woods and so fly over to Hawaii for some nice surfing instead.  While in Hawaii the police start asking about Bob and realize he was murdered (and that he goes well with ketchup).</p>

<p>A crime has been committed, but at this point no one can tell which state the crime was committed in.  The people in question are arrested in a third state that definitely doesn't have jurisdiction, so they would have to extradite us to one of the two states for trial, how does one decide which state can try us?  Do they just ship us to whichever state they feel like?  What if one state has harsher punishment for the crime then the other, can we demand to be shipped off to the one with the more lenient laws?</p>

<p>In fact let's go a step further.  After some digging it's discovered that state B has for some reason left some bizzare loophole in their murder statue which says that it's totally okay to murder someone for dinner so long as their name is Bob and their eaten with extra ketchup.  Now rather or not we are guilty of a crime at all depends on which side of the border we happened to be on during dinner time, which can't be proven.  All three states decide they want to proscute us, do they have any option so long as there is a chance that we were in B at the time?</p>

<p>They could be prosecuted in any state where there was evidence that part of the crime was committed. Realistically, either State A or State B could prosecute for conspiracy to murder as an additional charge, because the conspiracy clearly spanned more than one state, even if they can't prove where the crime was committed, although physical evidence (e.g. traces of camp sites, footprints, testimony about landmarks, evidence of poop with human DNA from the victim in it), would usually make it possible to show that some part of the crime was committed in the state.</p>

<p>There is probably also a federal crime that could be implicated such as "murder involving flight across a state line" (hypothetical, but I'm sure that there is something similar on the books).</p>

<p>I'm not going to address the further hypothetical as it is too bizzare and law is ultimately very context specific. Find a more plausible fact pattern, perhaps with a different crime, and ask a separate question if you want to really address the issue.</p>
