Lockett v. Ohio

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 got to decide what evidence was relevant to the death penalty sentence. Ohio's statute, for example, listed the three factors that the state had decided were relevant. 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 people convicted 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 been overturned 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."