Georgia | Donnie Lance set for execution on Jan. 29

Condemned killer from Jackson Co set for execution

A state court judge has denied a request for a stay of execution in the case of Donnie Lance. The 65 year-old Lance is on Georgia’s death row for 2 murders committed 22 years ago in Jackson County. His 39 year-old ex-wife and her 33 year-old boyfriend were killed in November of 1997.

Lance’s execution is scheduled for next Wednesday at the state prison in Jackson.

Lance’s lawyers had asked Butts County Superior Court Judge Thomas Wilson to first decide whether the grand jury that handed up Lance’s indictment was illegally stacked with friends of the district attorney and those the prosecutor knew would be on his side. But Wilson, in a one-sentence order, declined to delay the execution.

Lance, 65, sits on death row for the November 1997 murders in Jackson County of his ex-wife, 39-year-old Joy Lance, and her boyfriend, 33-year-old Dwight “Butch” Wood.

Joy Lance was beaten to death and Wood was killed by 2 shotgun blasts. Lance is to be put to death by a lethal injection of pentobarbital.

Lawyers from the state Attorney General’s Office had asked Wilson not to delay the execution. Lance has appealed his convictions for more than 20 years and his latest motion contending corruption in the selection of grand jurors was unsuccessfully litigated years ago, they said.

In a recent court filing, Lance’s lawyers said they uncovered new evidence about the grand jury process through interviews and historical grand jury research conducted in 2018 and 2019. At the time of Lance’s indictment, District Attorney Tim Madison “packed” the grand jury with individuals he knew and who repeatedly served as grand jurors through terms of court, the filing said.

Madison is no longer DA. In 2008, he pleaded guilty to felony charges for his role in a payroll theft scheme while he was in office. He was sentenced to six years in prison and ordered to pay $40,000 in restitution.

By allegedly stacking the grand jury, the motion said, Madison deprived Lance of his constitutional right to a fair trial.

“To countenance this error in even a single capital case undermines the reliability of the death penalty as a reflection of contemporary moral values,” the motion said. A conviction spawned from a tainted grand jury, the motion added, also violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Parole board sets clemency hearing for condemned Georgia man

Georgia's parole board has scheduled a hearing to weigh arguments for and against clemency for a man convicted of killing his ex-wife and her boyfriend.

Donnie Cleveland Lance is scheduled to be put to death Jan. 29. He was convicted and sentenced to die for the November 1997 killings of Sabrina “Joy” Lance and Dwight “Butch” Wood Jr. in Jackson County, about 60 miles northeast of Atlanta.

The State Board of Pardons and Paroles has scheduled a closed-door clemency hearing for Lance on Jan. 28.

The parole board is the only authority in Georgia that can commute a death sentence.

Source: WGAU news, Associated Press, January 24, 2020

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