6
Opinion of the Court
To resolve an apparent conflict with a decision of the Ninth Circuit, United States v. Randolph, 93 F. 3d 656 (1996),4 we
granted certiorari. 523 U. S. 1093 (1998).
II
Writing for the Court in United States v. Turkette, 452 U. S. 576, 593 (1981), Justice White reminded us that the language of the statutes that Congress enacts provides "the most reliable evidence of its intent." For that reason, we typically begin the task of statutory construction by focusing on the words that the drafters have chosen. In interpreting the statute at issue, "[w]e consider not only the bare meaning" of the critical word or phrase "but also its placement and purpose in the statutory scheme." Bailey v. United States, 516 U. S. 137, 145 (1995).
The specific issue in this case is what sort of evil motive Congress intended to describe when it used the words "with the intent to cause death or serious bodily harm" in the 1994 amendment to the carjacking statute. More precisely, the question is whether a person who points a gun at a driver, having decided to pull the trigger if the driver does not comply with a demand for the car keys, possesses the intent, at that moment, to seriously harm the driver. In our view, the
4 The Ninth Circuit held that neither a person's mere threat to the driver that " 'she would be okay if she [did] what was told of her' " nor "the brandishing of a weapon, without more" constituted an intent to cause death or serious bodily harm under the amended version of § 2119. 93 F. 3d, at 664-665. The court therefore reversed the defendant's carjacking conviction on the ground of insufficient evidence. In the course of its opinion, the Ninth Circuit also stated more broadly that "[t]he mere conditional intent to harm a victim if she resists is simply not enough to satisfy § 2119's new specific intent requirement." Id., at 665. It is this proposition with which other courts have disagreed. See United States v. Williams, 136 F. 3d 547, 550-551 (CA8 1998), cert. pending, No. 97-9553; United States v. Arnold, 126 F. 3d 82, 89, n. 4 (CA2 1997); United States v. Romero, 122 F. 3d 1334, 1338 (CA10 1997), cert. denied, 523 U. S. 1025 (1998); United States v. Anderson, 108 F. 3d 478, 481-483 (CA3), cert. denied, 522 U. S. 843 (1997).
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