Texas carries out rare execution of female prisoner with lethal jab

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.

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.

She was sentenced 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.