A woman convicted of torturing and killing a mentally impaired man lured to Texas with the promise of marriage was put to death last night after a last-minute appeal was rejected.
The lethal injection of Suzanne Basso (59) made her only the 14th woman executed in the US since the Supreme Court in 1976 allowed capital punishment to resume.
Almost 1,400 men have been put to death during that time.
She was sentenced to die for the 1998 killing of 59-year-old Louis “Buddy” Musso, whose battered and lacerated body, washed with bleach and scoured with a wire brush, was found in a ditch outside Houston.
Prosecutors said Basso had made herself the beneficiary of Mr Musso's insurance policies and took over his social security benefits after luring him from New Jersey.
The execution, the second this year in Texas, came about an hour after the Supreme Court rejected a last-day appeal from Basso’s lawyer, who argued she was not mentally competent.
Lower federal courts and state courts also refused to halt the punishment, upholding the findings of a state judge last month that Basso had a history of fabricating stories about herself, seeking attention and manipulating psychological tests.
Her lawyer, Winston Cochran, argued that the case against his client has three major flaws: no mitigating evidence was presented at trial, the testimony of a medical examiner was questionable, and no testimony or evidence shows that she personally killed Musso or proves exactly how he died.
Mr Cochran said Basso’s trial failed to mention circumstances that might have led to a lesser sentence, including a long history of mental illness and delusions and being physically and sexually abused as a child.
Basso told a warden, “no sir,” when asked to make a final statement. She appeared to be holding back tears, then smiled at two friends watching through a nearby window. She mouthed a brief word to them and nodded.
As the drug took effect, she began to snore.
Basso was pronounced dead 11 minutes after the lethal dose of pentobarbital began.
Basso’s lawyer, Winston Cochran, argued she suffered from delusions and that the state law governing competency was unconstitutionally flawed.
About 60 women are on death row in the US, making up about 2 per cent of the 3,100 condemned inmates.
Texas, the nation’s busiest death-penalty state, has now executed five women and 505 men.
Agencies