Woman executed for 1998 murder of mentally handicapped man
HUNTSVILLE – Harris County killer Suzanne Basso, condemned for murdering a developmentally disabled man to claim his life insurance benefits, was executed in Texas' death House Wednesday after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review issues presented in a final death-day appeal.
Basso, 59, a one-time seamstress from New York, led a group of five accomplices in brutally beating and kicking Louis "Buddy" Musso, 59, to death in August 1998. Basso had lured Musso to Texas from New Jersey with the promise of marriage.
In the days leading to his death, court documents indicate, Basso, who then weighed more than 300 pounds, repeatedly jumped on Musso, who had been forced onto his hands and knees. The attack broke many of his ribs. The attackers also beat the man with a belt, kicked him with heavy boots and scrubbed his body, doused in a mixture of chlorine bleach and pine oil disinfectant, with a wire brush. Musso's battered, bruised body was found near a Harris County road. Authorities said his death was caused by a fractured skull.
In his final appeals on Basso's behalf, League City lawyer Winston Cochran early Wednesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the constitutionality of Texas' law to establish a killer's competency to be executed. Under the law, a killer must be aware that he will be executed and why.
Cochran argued that the Texas standard does not adequately give weight to a killer's delusional thinking. Basso, he noted, repeatedly told improbable stories, including one in which she was an aide to former New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller. In another, she claimed a nurse had tried to kill her by hiding a snake in a hollow book given to her as a gift.
Basso claimed she suffered beatings in the Harris County Jail that left her paralyzed from the chest down, but, Cochran said, her paralysis actually resulted from a chronic, degenerative disease.
Two psychiatrists who had examined Basso testified in a Houston competency hearing that she met the Texas standard for execution.
Basso was the 510th killer and fifth woman executed in Texas since the state reinstituted capital punishment in 1982.
Her accomplices are serving prison terms ranging from 20 years to life.
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