Lockett v. Ohio

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 inmates received 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 brother accompanied Parker and Dew back to Lockett's hometown of Akron, Ohio. Parker and 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 grocery store and a furniture store, using a gun from her father's basement. By the time the plan was made, however, the stores had closed and it was too late to rob 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 the engine 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 and lived 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.