The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Man executed for killing ex-wife, boyfriend in ’97
U.S. Supreme Court denied stay, clearing way for death.
JACKSON — Georgia has executed Donnie Lance for the 1997 murders of his ex-wife and her boyfriend in Jackson County.
Time of death was 9:05 p.m. Wednesday.
Lance, 65, who was sentenced to death in 1999, was given a lethal injection of pentobarbital at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson.
He declined to make a final statement. The last word he uttered was “No” when asked if he wanted a final prayer.
Lance closed his eyes as the warden finished reading the death warrant. The drug began to flow at about 8:54 p.m.
At 8:56 p.m., Lance blew out a large puff of air. A woman in the front row cried. Lance’s mouth came open, but he barely moved except for wiggling his toes.
By 9 o’clock, the color had drained from Lance’s face. Moments later, his arms and hands became pale.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied Lance’s final appeals at roughly 8:15 p.m., clearing the way for his execution. The high court, in two separate orders, declined to hear Lance’s requests that it halt his execution on grounds of alleged prosecution misconduct and lower-court rulings that denied his request for DNA testing.
Lance’s legal team filed the motions shortly after the Georgia Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal.
His attorneys said his 1999 trial’s jurors should have known Lance had brain damage and an IQ that makes him borderline intellectually disabled.
Lance’s son and daughter have pleaded with officials not to kill him for murdering their mother.
Lance has maintained his innocence, and his grown children have spent months unsuccessfully calling for DNA testing on case evidence to confirm whether he killed their mother.
Family’s final visit
Stephanie Cape and her brother, Jessie Lance, had a visit with their dad Wednesday afternoon and shared old stories and memories, trying not to think about his fate. The siblings said they’d both been thinking a lot about what their mother would think of the situation.
“I can’t imagine any mother would want this to happen,” Jessie Lance told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Just let us keep our dad.”
Cape recalled the last embrace she had with her father. He told her to remember that just because he’s leaving doesn’t mean he’s going anywhere.
One of the last things Donnie Lance told both of his kids was that he had been saved and intended to go to heaven with all their other lost family members.
“We have spent our whole lives with this huge gaping hole in our hearts,” Cape and her brother wrote in a recent letter asking the state for mercy, “but at least we’ve had dad at our sides. It’s almost impossible to imagine that it could get worse.”
The State Board of Pardons and Paroles declined Tuesday to grant clemency to Lance. The state board is the only authority in Georgia that can commute a death sentence.
The terrible crime
Lance’s death marks the end to a complex and emotionally trying saga.
It began on Nov. 8, 1997, when Joy Love Lance, 39, who had worked as a secretary at a trucking company, was savagely beaten to death. Her boyfriend, Dwight “Butch” Wood Jr., 33, a truck driver and father of three, was shot in the back with a shotgun. The bodies were found at Wood’s home in the Maysville area, and police brought Donnie Lance in for questioning within hours.
Lance’s attorneys noted there was no physical evidence on him, in spite of the bloody nature of his ex-wife’s beating. The lawyers asked for DNA testing on wood fragments from what is believed to be the butt of the shotgun and a fingerprint from a shotgun shell found at the scene.
Jackson County District Attorney Brad Smith and state attorneys have said the evidence against Lance, “although circumstantial, was overwhelming.” Prosecutors maintain Lance was abusive to his ex-wife for years before the murders. Witnesses said they’d heard Donnie Lance threaten to kill her if she divorced him and became involved with Wood.