MERRITT, Circuit Judge. On December 2, 2003, three men robbed a bank in Pataskala, Ohio, while their getaway driver, Lavelle Parks, waited outside. The men made off with $5,347, and a high-speed chase ensued. While trying to evade police, Parks crashed the getaway car into another vehicle, resulting in the death of Daryl Williams, one of Parks’s passengers and co-participants.

This case raises two questions of statutory construction with regard to a provision of the federal bank robbery statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2113(e). First, what mens rea, if any, does the government need to prove to establish a violation of § 2113(e), which punishes anyone who, in “attempting to avoid apprehension for [a bank robbery], . . . kills any person”? Second, what is the minimum penalty for such a killing? Though distinct, these questions are intertwined in at least one important respect: if, as the prosecution asserts, the minimum penalty for violating the statute is life imprisonment, a court should be less inclined to conclude that the statute itself dispenses with any mens rea requirement, since “the penalty imposed under a statute has been a significant consideration in determining whether the statute should be construed as dispensing with mens rea.” Staples v. United States, 511 U.S. 600, 616 (1994). The District Court, while expressing reluctance to impose a life sentence, believed that United States v. Poindexter, 44 F.3d 406 (6th Cir. 1995), controlled the outcome of this case and required a mandatory life sentence for even an accidental killing. The parties did not point out to the District Court that the language of the statute interpreted in Poindexter is different from the language of the statute we interpret here. Because Poindexter interpreted an earlier version of the statute, which said nothing about life imprisonment, we vacate Parks’s sentence and remand the case to the District Court for reconsideration. Because Judges Cook and White agree that the conviction under § 2113(e) must be upheld and Judge White and I agree that the sentence must be reversed, our judgment in this case is that the conviction is affirmed but the sentence is vacated and the case remanded for reconsideration.