Spare father, his kids urge Georgia

ATLANTA — A Georgia man convicted of killing his exwife and her boyfriend shouldn’t be executed, his lawyers argue, citing the additional pain it will cause his children, evidence of brain damage not heard by the jury that sentenced him to die and his model behavior in prison.

Donnie Cleveland Lance, 66, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection Wednesday. 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, the only authority in Georgia that can commute a death sentence, plans to hold a closed clemency hearing today. The board on Monday declassified a clemency application filed by Lance’s lawyers.

Stephanie Lance Cape and Jessie Lance, the now-adult children of Donnie and Joy Lance, have submitted a letter to the parole board and plan to ask for mercy at today’s hearing. Donnie Lance has maintained his innocence and his children have doubts about his guilt, but their plea for clemency doesn’t depend on those doubts, the application says.

“We’ve spent our whole lives with this huge gaping hole in our hearts, but at least we’ve had dad at our sides,” they wrote in the letter, which is quoted in the application. “It’s almost impossible to imagine that it could get worse.”

The clemency application details the close contact the pair have maintained with their father during his more than two decades on death row, relying on his advice and support. They acknowledge that their mother’s family and Wood’s family have also suffered enormously as a result of the killings.

“With us being the exception, everyone has lost everything they are going to lose from this nightmare,” they wrote. “We have lost just as much, but somehow, we still have more to lose — and that’s being taken away even as we sit here now. We’ll continue to pray this final loss doesn’t come to pass.”