Houston: A 59-year-old-woman has been executed by lethal injection for killing a mentally disabled man she lured to Texas with the promise of marriage, in a rare execution of a female prisoner in the US.
Suzanne Basso was put to death on Wednesday after a last minute appeal to the US Supreme Court failed to halt the procedure. She was pronounced dead at 6:26 pm (local time) at Huntsville Prison, after lethal drugs flowed into her veins.
Basso became the 14th woman to be executed in the country since capital punishment resumed in 1976. Nearly 1,400 men have been put to death. There are approximately 60 women currently on death row in the US.
Basso was sentenced to death in 1998 for killing Louis "Buddy" Musso after prosecutors argued she lured him to Texas from New Jersey with the promise of marriage and murdered him in an attempt to benefit from his life insurance. Musso was burned with cigarettes and beaten with belts, baseball bats by Basso and five accomplices.
His body, bloodied and battered beyond recognition, was found dumped in a roadside ditch near Houston in August 1998. The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals refused to stop Basso's scheduled execution.
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.
Basso's attorney Winston Cochran Jr. argued she suffered from delusions and that the state law governing competency was unconstitutionally flawed. Texas, the nation's busiest death-penalty state, now has executed five women and 505 men.
The state of Texas used a single drug rather than a three-drug cocktail that was in use until 2012, when export bans by drug manufacturers created massive shortages of the drugs. A media report found that executions using the new method take on average twice as long as they did with the old method.
The lethal injection drug shortage has affected every state that uses this method of execution. The family of a man executed in Ohio last month is suing the state for violating his right to avoid cruel and unusual punishment after his 25-minute execution appeared to be excruciatingly painful.
Another execution scheduled for on Wednesday in Louisiana was postponed for three months for the state to review the drugs that are to be used.
