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A woman convicted of murder has been put to death by lethal injection in the US state of Texas.
A late plea to the Supreme Court over the mental competence of Suzanne Basso, 59, was rejected, and an AP journalist reported that she looked as if she was on the verge of crying before the execution. She was pronounced dead at 18:26 local time (00:26 GMT) after a lethal dose of pentobarbital.
In 1998 Basso was convicted of torturing and killing an mentally handicapped man, Louis Musso, 59, that she had promised to marry to claim his insurance and benefits. Musso’s dead body was found dumped in a ditch outside Houston, badly beaten, burned with cigarettes, and washed with bleach.
Basso was helped by five accomplices in her crime, but she was the only one to receive the death penalty with the prosecution describing her as the ringleader. Basso’s daughter testified against her during the trial, describing the physical and sexual abuse to which her mother had subjected her.
Women make up around 2% of those on death row in the US, with Basso the 14th woman to be executed since 1976 when the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty. 18 states have since banned the death penalty, but the punishment remains legal in the other 32.
