The Court drew this conclusion from the structure of the statute, under which two subsections provided for additional punishment if the defendant inflicts more serious harm.

The Court also distinguished Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523 U.S. 224 (1998), because that case allowed for sentencing enhancement based on a prior conviction.

On appeal, the Ninth Circuit took the view that the enhanced provisions were merely sentencing factors that did not need to be set forth in the indictment or submitted to the jury.

§ 2119, reads: Whoever, possessing a firearm as defined in section 921 of [Title 18], takes a motor vehicle that has been transported, shipped, or received in interstate or foreign commerce from the person or presence of another by force and violence or by intimidation, or attempts to do so, shall— The Court ultimately held that the additional elements specified in subsections (2) and (3)—serious bodily injury and death—were elements of greater crimes that had to be charged in the indictment, submitted to the jury, and proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

In Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U.S. 684 (1975), the Court had held that a state could not define murder so as to require the defendant to affirmatively prove that he had acted in the heat of passion, so as to reduce the crime to manslaughter.

In light of the "centuries-old common law recognition of malice as the fact distinguishing murder from manslaughter" and of the "widely held modern view that heat of passion, once raised by the evidence, was a subject of the State's burden," due process required the state to bear the burden of proving absence of heat of passion.

New York was free to define homicide without reference to a malice element without violating the traditional rule that the burden of proof in criminal cases rests on the state.

And in McMillan v. Pennsylvania, 477 U.S. 79 (1986), the Court held that a mandatory minimum five-year sentence for possessing a firearm was not subject to the jury-trial and proof-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt requirement, because it did not increase the maximum punishment to which the defendant was exposed.

The distinguishing factor between Mullaney on the one hand and Patterson and McMillan on the other was that the fact in question exposed the defendant to a greater punishment.

Thus, to avoid any unnecessary tension with Mullaney, Patterson, and McMillan, the Court held that these facts were elements of separate federal carjacking crimes.

Because, for Kennedy, the text of the statute was not clearly susceptible to two different interpretations, there was no need to invoke the principle of constitutional avoidance as the majority did.

In any event, the constitutional rule the Court articulated could too easily be circumvented, simply by rewriting the statute using slightly different words.