Cite as: 526 U. S. 1 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
Criminal Code.11 The core principle that emerges from these sources is that a defendant may not negate a proscribed intent by requiring the victim to comply with a condition the defendant has no right to impose; "[a]n intent to kill, in the alternative, is nevertheless an intent to kill." 12
This interpretation of the statute's specific intent element does not, as petitioner suggests, render superfluous the statute's "by force and violence or by intimidation" element. While an empty threat, or intimidating bluff, would be sufficient to satisfy the latter element, such conduct, standing on its own, is not enough to satisfy § 2119's specific intent element.13 In a carjacking case in which the driver surrendered or otherwise lost control over his car without the defendant attempting to inflict, or actually inflicting, serious bodily harm, Congress' inclusion of the intent element re-11 Section 2.02(6) of the Model Penal Code provides: "Requirement of Purpose Satisfied if Purpose is Conditional. "When a particular purpose is an element of an offense, the element is established although such purpose is conditional, unless the condition negatives the harm or evil sought to be prevented by the law defining the offense." American Law Institute, Model Penal Code (1985).
Of course, in this case the condition that the driver surrender the car was the precise evil that Congress wanted to prevent.
12 Perkins & Boyce, Criminal Law, at 647.
13 In somewhat different contexts, courts have held that a threat to harm does not in itself constitute intent to harm or kill. In Hairston v. State, 54 Miss. 689 (1877), for example, the defendant in an angry and profane manner threatened to shoot a person if that person stopped the defend-ant's mules. The court affirmed the defendant's conviction for assault, but reversed a conviction of assault with intent to commit murder, explaining that "we have found no case of a conviction of assault with intent to kill or murder, upon proof only of the levelling of a gun or pistol." Id., at 694. See also Myers v. Clearman, 125 Iowa 461, 464, 101 N. W. 193, 194 (1904) (in determining whether defendant acted with intent to commit great bodily harm the issue for the jury was "whether the accused, in aiming his revolver at [the victim], intended to inflict great bodily harm, or some more serious offense, or did this merely with the purpose of frightening her").
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