Cite as: 526 U. S. 227 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
The seriousness of the due process issue is evident from Mullaney's insistence that a State cannot manipulate its way out of Winship, and from Patterson's recognition of a limit on state authority to reallocate traditional burdens of proof; the substantiality of the jury claim is evident from the practical implications of assuming Sixth Amendment indifference to treating a fact that sets the sentencing range as a sentencing factor, not an element.6
The terms of the carjacking statute illustrate very well what is at stake. If serious bodily injury were merely a sentencing factor under § 2119(2) (increasing the authorized penalty by two thirds, to 25 years), then death would presumably be nothing more than a sentencing factor under subsection (3) (increasing the penalty range to life). If a potential penalty might rise from 15 years to life on a nonjury determination, the jury's role would correspondingly shrink
6 The dissent repeatedly chides us for failing to state precisely enough the principle animating our view that the carjacking statute, as construed by the Government, may violate the Constitution. See post, at 254, 266, 277. The preceding paragraph in the text expresses that principle plainly enough, and we restate it here: under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment and the notice and jury trial guarantees of the Sixth Amendment, any fact (other than prior conviction) that increases the maximum penalty for a crime must be charged in an indictment, submitted to a jury, and proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Because our prior cases suggest rather than establish this principle, our concern about the Government's reading of the statute rises only to the level of doubt, not certainty.
Contrary to the dissent's suggestion, the constitutional proposition that drives our concern in no way "call[s] into question the principle that the definition of the elements of a criminal offense is entrusted to the legislature." Post, at 270 (internal quotation marks omitted). The constitutional guarantees that give rise to our concern in no way restrict the ability of legislatures to identify the conduct they wish to characterize as criminal or to define the facts whose proof is essential to the establishment of criminal liability. The constitutional safeguards that figure in our analysis concern not the identity of the elements defining criminal liability but only the required procedures for finding the facts that determine the maximum permissible punishment; these are the safeguards going to the formality of notice, the identity of the factfinder, and the burden of proof.
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