hit cmnd-I to launch the inspector and un-check the "locked" checkbox for the offending file. I know this is slow but that's the purpose of locking a file...to prevent it from being casually deleted. With OS X we can prevent casual deletion with permissions so this is less of an now and locked files are a now a PITA. I agree, Apple should enable the option-empty trash combo for OS X. Y ps. do you know about shift-cmnd-delete then return shortcut in the finder to empty your trash? Better then nothing, but no option overrides are available that I know of