Petitioner
Sandra Lockett
Respondent
State of Ohio
Petitioner's Claim
That the Ohio death penalty statute--which limited the number of mitigating factors that a judge passing sentence could take into account--was unconstitutional.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
Anthony G. Amsterdam
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
Carl M. Layman III
Justices for the Court
Harry A. Blackmun, Warren E. Burger (writing for the Court), Thurgood Marshall, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., John Paul Stevens, Potter Stewart
Justices Dissenting
William H. Rehnquist, Byron R. White (William J. Brennan, Jr. did not participate)
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
3 July 1978
Decision
That the death penalty is so severe, it requires greater reliability than other penalties, and so statutes that limit the mitigating factors that a sentencer may take into account are indeed violations of the Eighth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment.
Significance
Because of this case, many states, including Ohio, rewrote their death penalty statutes to allow sentencers to take mitigating factors into account. Subsequently, several death penalty cases were reversed and some death row inmatesreceived sentences other than the death penalty.
Sandra Lockett was a 21-year-old woman visiting New Jersey when she met Al Parker and Nathan Earl Dew. Lockett, her friend Joanne Baxter, and her brotheraccompanied Parker and Dew back to Lockett's hometown of Akron, Ohio. Parkerand Dew realized, after they had arrived, that they had no money for their trip back to New Jersey. Lockett suggested obtaining money by robbing a grocerystore and a furniture store, using a gun from her father's basement. By thetime the plan was made, however, the stores had closed and it was too late torob them.
The group next came up with a plan to rob a pawnshop. Parker, Dew, and Lockett's brother loaded the gun with bullets they had brought in themselves, and used the gun to rob the shop. Lockett was supposed to wait in the car with theengine running while the others were in the shop. But when Parker used the gun for the stickup, the pawnbroker grabbed for it. The gun went off with Parker's finger on the trigger, killing the pawnbroker.
Lockett was waiting with the car when the others came out. When she heard what had happened, she put the gun in her purse. Later she stored it under the seat of a taxicab that she and Parker were taking to escape. When the police stopped them, Lockett told them that Parker rented a room from her mother andlived with her family, and, after checking with her family, the police let them go. Lockett hid Dew and Parker in her attic when the police showed up at her family's house later that night.
Did She Deserve to Die?
This was the extent of the state's murder case against Sandra Lockett. Underan Ohio law, however:
Ironically, Parker, who had actually had his hand on the gun, had made a dealwith the state. In exchange for a plea that eliminated the possibility of him receiving the death penalty, he would testify against Lockett, her brother,and Dew. Lockett, on the other hand, who had done nothing more than help devise a plan for robbery--not murder--and drive a getaway car, was found guiltyof aggravated murder. Under Ohio state law, there were only three mitigatingcircumstances that might allow the sentencer to avoid imposing the death penalty:
(1) If the victim had "induced or facilitated the offense";
(2) If the murderer was "under duress, coercion, or strong provocation";
(3) If the murder was "primarily the product of [the murderer's] psychosis ormental deficiency."
The psychiatric and psychological reports on Lockett showed that she was an excellent candidate for rehabilitation. Although she was of average or below-average intelligence, she had committed no major offenses (though she had a record of several minor ones), and she was "on the road to success" in curing her addiction to heroin. Yet these very factors meant that she was not eligible for consideration to avoid the death penalty. Clearly, she was not psychotic or mentally deficient.
Deciding Who Shall Die
In considering Lockett v. Ohio, the Court kept in mind a previous landmark death penalty case, Furman v. Georgia (1972). In that case, the Court expressed its dismay at the inconsistency of death penalty sentencing, pointing out that without clear statutory guidelines as to when the death penalty should be administered, courts were prone to discriminate against minority defendants.
As a result, many states enacted mandatory death penalty statutes, laying outthe types of cases in which judges were legally required to offer the deathpenalty. Other states, including Ohio, enacted statutes that listed the factors that a judge might consider in deciding whether or not to offer the deathpenalty. Indeed, the Ohio state legislature had been in the process of writing a new death penalty statute when Furman came down, and legislators revised their new law to conform to the new decision.
Now the Court was viewing another situation with dismay: restrictive laws that kept judges from taking all mitigating circumstances into account when theyadministered the severest penalty of all. The Court had already struck downseveral mandatory death penalty statutes. In Lockett, it would go onestep further: it would require that judges who were administering the death penalty should hear evidence on any mitigating circumstance that the defense wished to present.
The Mitigating Factors
The Court's reasoning was based on three arguments:
(1) The Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments require that "in all but the rarestkind of capital [death penalty] case," the sentence be able to take into account the defendant's character and record, as well as any circumstances surrounding the offense that the defendant offers.
(2) After a person has been sentenced to prison, he or she might be offered probation, parole, or work furlough. Thus, even if the sentence were given without regard to the person's individuality, some mechanisms are available to tailor the sentence more exactly to fit the unique circumstances surrounding the person and the crime. In the case of the death penalty, however, these "post-conviction mechanisms" are not available. All the more reason, then, that"each defendant in a capital case [be treated] with the degree of respect duethe uniqueness of the individual."
(3) A statute that restricts the sentencer from taking into account the defendant's character and record, as well as the circumstances surrounding the offense, "creates the risk that the death penalty will be imposed in spite of factors that may call for a less severe penalty, and when the choice is betweenlife and death, such risk is unacceptable and incompatible with the commandsof the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments."
The Evidence a Defendant Can Present
The Court said that its Lockett decision simply recognized the principle that punishment should be individual, fitting both the crime and the person who committed the crime as exactly as possible. But, in fact, Lockett considerably broadened that principle. Before Lockett, the state gotto decide what evidence was relevant to the death penalty sentence. Ohio's statute, for example, listed the three factors that the state had decided wererelevant. What Lockett said was that the defendant, rather than the state, got to decide what evidence to present to the sentencing judge--and that the defendant's right to make this decision was guaranteed by the Constitution.
The decades since Lockett have seen increasing hostility toward peopleconvicted of crimes. The trend has been to call for ever-harsher penalties,often mandatory penalties, and to impose the death penalty more and more often. Yet because of Lockett, at least six death penalty cases have beenoverturned by the Supreme Court, and potentially many more death penalty sentences were not offered in the first place. Ohio itself rewrote its death penalty statute, raising the number of mitigating factors to be taken into account from three to seven, and including as the seventh a "catch-all" provision that reads, "Any other factors that are relevant to the issue of whether the offender should be sentenced to death."
In a climate of increasing support for the death penalty, the doctrine of Lockett continues to endure. It reminds sentences and legislators alike that under the U.S. Constitution, even a convicted criminal has the right to "respect [for] the uniqueness of the individual."
Related Cases
Mitigating Circumstances
Mitigating circumstances, or mitigating factors, are facts which, though theydo not exonerate the defendant, may serve to reduce the charge or the punishment. In civil actions, for instance, the defense will often ask the jury toconsider mitigating circumstances in order to reduce the damages or the extent of the defendant's liability. Thus the legal counsel for a corporation accused of racist hiring practices may seek to show such mitigating factors as the company's heavy investment in inner-city community development programs.
As for mitigating circumstances in criminal law, these are most often broughtto bear in cases where the death penalty is among the forms of punishment available. Mitigating circumstances could include mental illness, the youth ofthe defendant, economic hardship, and childhood abuse. Though the use of mitigating circumstances often generates little sympathy among the population asa whole, to whom the idea of justifying heinous crimes on the basis of past abuse has become something of a running joke, the Supreme Court has ruled thatjuries must consider mitigating circumstances in death-penalty cases. The Court has used as its basis the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel andunusual punishment, and the Fourteenth Amendment's extension of due process to the states.
Sources
West's Encyclopedia of American Law. St. Paul, MN: West Group, 1998.
Knapp Brothers Murder Trials
In 1830, brothers John Francis Knapp and Joseph Jenkins Knapp conspired to have their wealthy uncle, Captain Joseph White, murdered. They hired Richard Crowninshield to carry out the deed. On the night of 6 April 1830, Crowninshield slew Captain White in his sleep, while the brothers waited outside on the street, 300-feet away.
The case was significant because it was the first time that accessories to murder had been tried, convicted, and executed. The eloquence of prosecutor Daniel Webster in defeating an old English common law that an accessory to murder could not be convicted without being present at the time of the murder brought the Knapp brothers to justice. Webster in his prosecution redefined the legality of being present during the murder by raising the issue " . . . to constitute a presence, it is sufficient if the accomplice is in a place, eitherwhere he may render aid to the perpetrator of the felony, or where the perpetrator supposes he may render aid. If they selected the place to afford assistance, whether it was well or ill chosen for that purpose is immaterial. Theperpetrator would derive courage and confidence from the knowledge that his associate was in the place appointed."
Sources
Knappman, Edward W. Great American Trials. Detroit, MI: Visible Ink Press, 1994.
Sandra Lockett
Respondent
State of Ohio
Petitioner's Claim
That the Ohio death penalty statute--which limited the number of mitigating factors that a judge passing sentence could take into account--was unconstitutional.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
Anthony G. Amsterdam
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
Carl M. Layman III
Justices for the Court
Harry A. Blackmun, Warren E. Burger (writing for the Court), Thurgood Marshall, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., John Paul Stevens, Potter Stewart
Justices Dissenting
William H. Rehnquist, Byron R. White (William J. Brennan, Jr. did not participate)
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
3 July 1978
Decision
That the death penalty is so severe, it requires greater reliability than other penalties, and so statutes that limit the mitigating factors that a sentencer may take into account are indeed violations of the Eighth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment.
Significance
Because of this case, many states, including Ohio, rewrote their death penalty statutes to allow sentencers to take mitigating factors into account. Subsequently, several death penalty cases were reversed and some death row inmatesreceived sentences other than the death penalty.
Sandra Lockett was a 21-year-old woman visiting New Jersey when she met Al Parker and Nathan Earl Dew. Lockett, her friend Joanne Baxter, and her brotheraccompanied Parker and Dew back to Lockett's hometown of Akron, Ohio. Parkerand Dew realized, after they had arrived, that they had no money for their trip back to New Jersey. Lockett suggested obtaining money by robbing a grocerystore and a furniture store, using a gun from her father's basement. By thetime the plan was made, however, the stores had closed and it was too late torob them.
The group next came up with a plan to rob a pawnshop. Parker, Dew, and Lockett's brother loaded the gun with bullets they had brought in themselves, and used the gun to rob the shop. Lockett was supposed to wait in the car with theengine running while the others were in the shop. But when Parker used the gun for the stickup, the pawnbroker grabbed for it. The gun went off with Parker's finger on the trigger, killing the pawnbroker.
Lockett was waiting with the car when the others came out. When she heard what had happened, she put the gun in her purse. Later she stored it under the seat of a taxicab that she and Parker were taking to escape. When the police stopped them, Lockett told them that Parker rented a room from her mother andlived with her family, and, after checking with her family, the police let them go. Lockett hid Dew and Parker in her attic when the police showed up at her family's house later that night.
Did She Deserve to Die?
This was the extent of the state's murder case against Sandra Lockett. Underan Ohio law, however:
[One who] purposely aids, helps, associateshimself or herself with another for the purpose of committing a crime is regarded as if he or she were the principal offender and is just as guilty as ifthe person performed every act constituting the offense . . .
Ironically, Parker, who had actually had his hand on the gun, had made a dealwith the state. In exchange for a plea that eliminated the possibility of him receiving the death penalty, he would testify against Lockett, her brother,and Dew. Lockett, on the other hand, who had done nothing more than help devise a plan for robbery--not murder--and drive a getaway car, was found guiltyof aggravated murder. Under Ohio state law, there were only three mitigatingcircumstances that might allow the sentencer to avoid imposing the death penalty:
(1) If the victim had "induced or facilitated the offense";
(2) If the murderer was "under duress, coercion, or strong provocation";
(3) If the murder was "primarily the product of [the murderer's] psychosis ormental deficiency."
The psychiatric and psychological reports on Lockett showed that she was an excellent candidate for rehabilitation. Although she was of average or below-average intelligence, she had committed no major offenses (though she had a record of several minor ones), and she was "on the road to success" in curing her addiction to heroin. Yet these very factors meant that she was not eligible for consideration to avoid the death penalty. Clearly, she was not psychotic or mentally deficient.
Deciding Who Shall Die
In considering Lockett v. Ohio, the Court kept in mind a previous landmark death penalty case, Furman v. Georgia (1972). In that case, the Court expressed its dismay at the inconsistency of death penalty sentencing, pointing out that without clear statutory guidelines as to when the death penalty should be administered, courts were prone to discriminate against minority defendants.
As a result, many states enacted mandatory death penalty statutes, laying outthe types of cases in which judges were legally required to offer the deathpenalty. Other states, including Ohio, enacted statutes that listed the factors that a judge might consider in deciding whether or not to offer the deathpenalty. Indeed, the Ohio state legislature had been in the process of writing a new death penalty statute when Furman came down, and legislators revised their new law to conform to the new decision.
Now the Court was viewing another situation with dismay: restrictive laws that kept judges from taking all mitigating circumstances into account when theyadministered the severest penalty of all. The Court had already struck downseveral mandatory death penalty statutes. In Lockett, it would go onestep further: it would require that judges who were administering the death penalty should hear evidence on any mitigating circumstance that the defense wished to present.
The Mitigating Factors
The Court's reasoning was based on three arguments:
(1) The Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments require that "in all but the rarestkind of capital [death penalty] case," the sentence be able to take into account the defendant's character and record, as well as any circumstances surrounding the offense that the defendant offers.
(2) After a person has been sentenced to prison, he or she might be offered probation, parole, or work furlough. Thus, even if the sentence were given without regard to the person's individuality, some mechanisms are available to tailor the sentence more exactly to fit the unique circumstances surrounding the person and the crime. In the case of the death penalty, however, these "post-conviction mechanisms" are not available. All the more reason, then, that"each defendant in a capital case [be treated] with the degree of respect duethe uniqueness of the individual."
(3) A statute that restricts the sentencer from taking into account the defendant's character and record, as well as the circumstances surrounding the offense, "creates the risk that the death penalty will be imposed in spite of factors that may call for a less severe penalty, and when the choice is betweenlife and death, such risk is unacceptable and incompatible with the commandsof the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments."
The Evidence a Defendant Can Present
The Court said that its Lockett decision simply recognized the principle that punishment should be individual, fitting both the crime and the person who committed the crime as exactly as possible. But, in fact, Lockett considerably broadened that principle. Before Lockett, the state gotto decide what evidence was relevant to the death penalty sentence. Ohio's statute, for example, listed the three factors that the state had decided wererelevant. What Lockett said was that the defendant, rather than the state, got to decide what evidence to present to the sentencing judge--and that the defendant's right to make this decision was guaranteed by the Constitution.
The decades since Lockett have seen increasing hostility toward peopleconvicted of crimes. The trend has been to call for ever-harsher penalties,often mandatory penalties, and to impose the death penalty more and more often. Yet because of Lockett, at least six death penalty cases have beenoverturned by the Supreme Court, and potentially many more death penalty sentences were not offered in the first place. Ohio itself rewrote its death penalty statute, raising the number of mitigating factors to be taken into account from three to seven, and including as the seventh a "catch-all" provision that reads, "Any other factors that are relevant to the issue of whether the offender should be sentenced to death."
In a climate of increasing support for the death penalty, the doctrine of Lockett continues to endure. It reminds sentences and legislators alike that under the U.S. Constitution, even a convicted criminal has the right to "respect [for] the uniqueness of the individual."
Related Cases
- United States v. Jackson, 390 U.S. 570 (1968).
- Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510 (1968).
- Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972).
- Smith v. North Carolina, 459 U.S. 1056 (1982).
- Jones v. Illinois, 464 U.S. 920 (1983).
- Straight v. Wainwright, 476 U.S. 1132 (1986).
- Darden v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 168 (1986).
Mitigating Circumstances
Mitigating circumstances, or mitigating factors, are facts which, though theydo not exonerate the defendant, may serve to reduce the charge or the punishment. In civil actions, for instance, the defense will often ask the jury toconsider mitigating circumstances in order to reduce the damages or the extent of the defendant's liability. Thus the legal counsel for a corporation accused of racist hiring practices may seek to show such mitigating factors as the company's heavy investment in inner-city community development programs.
As for mitigating circumstances in criminal law, these are most often broughtto bear in cases where the death penalty is among the forms of punishment available. Mitigating circumstances could include mental illness, the youth ofthe defendant, economic hardship, and childhood abuse. Though the use of mitigating circumstances often generates little sympathy among the population asa whole, to whom the idea of justifying heinous crimes on the basis of past abuse has become something of a running joke, the Supreme Court has ruled thatjuries must consider mitigating circumstances in death-penalty cases. The Court has used as its basis the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel andunusual punishment, and the Fourteenth Amendment's extension of due process to the states.
Sources
West's Encyclopedia of American Law. St. Paul, MN: West Group, 1998.
Knapp Brothers Murder Trials
In 1830, brothers John Francis Knapp and Joseph Jenkins Knapp conspired to have their wealthy uncle, Captain Joseph White, murdered. They hired Richard Crowninshield to carry out the deed. On the night of 6 April 1830, Crowninshield slew Captain White in his sleep, while the brothers waited outside on the street, 300-feet away.
The case was significant because it was the first time that accessories to murder had been tried, convicted, and executed. The eloquence of prosecutor Daniel Webster in defeating an old English common law that an accessory to murder could not be convicted without being present at the time of the murder brought the Knapp brothers to justice. Webster in his prosecution redefined the legality of being present during the murder by raising the issue " . . . to constitute a presence, it is sufficient if the accomplice is in a place, eitherwhere he may render aid to the perpetrator of the felony, or where the perpetrator supposes he may render aid. If they selected the place to afford assistance, whether it was well or ill chosen for that purpose is immaterial. Theperpetrator would derive courage and confidence from the knowledge that his associate was in the place appointed."
Sources
Knappman, Edward W. Great American Trials. Detroit, MI: Visible Ink Press, 1994.
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