OSX Trash

I don't know abou the Terminal but there's a shareware/freeware app called BatChmod (look on versiontracker) that has a "Force Empty Trash" command built in. Hope this helps!

Just switch to root you will own all and should be able to delete everything from the trash. If you are not confortable with being root, just empty the trash and logout.

Its not too hard...

Just cd to the .Trashes directory on the volume you want to empty the trash from. The directory is on the root level for the volume that OS X is installed on. In the .Trashes directory you should see user folders named by the user id number (501, 502, etc). If you are the only user, you'll only see one. cd into the numbered directory (ls to make sure its the right directory--look for the stuff you have to delete) and then sudo rm everything. Like this:

%cd /.Trashes
%ls
501/
502/
503/
%cd 501
%ls
junk.txt
junkdir/
%sudo rm -rf *

Be careful with the sudo rm command as you can trash your system with it. To be safe close the terminal window after the command has successfully completed.

I'm typing this from memory, BTW.

Matthew