Georgia Executes Donnie Lance Over Protests of Victim’s Children After Denying DNA Testing

Georgia exe­cut­ed Donnie Lance on January 29, 2020 after his requests for DNA test­ing and a plea for clemen­cy sup­port­ed by the chil­dren he and mur­der vic­tim Joy Lance shared were denied. 

Lance was con­vict­ed in 1999 of mur­der­ing his ex-wife, Joy Lance, and her boyfriend, Dwight Wood. He has main­tained his inno­cence in the killings and sought DNA test­ing of evi­dence from the crime scene. His two adult chil­dren, Jessie Lance and Stephanie Cape, not only sup­port­ed that request, but also asked the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant clemen­cy. In a let­ter to the Board, they wrote, ​“We have spent our whole lives with this huge gap­ing hole in our hearts, but at least we’ve had dad at our sides. It’s almost impos­si­ble to imag­ine that it could get worse.” 

In addi­tion to the family’s plea, Lance’s clemen­cy peti­tion and appeals also high­light­ed flaws in the legal process that led to his con­vic­tion. According to a motion his attor­neys filed in the Georgia Supreme Court, pros­e­cu­tors ille­gal­ly select­ed friends and allies for the grand jury that indict­ed Lance, rather than ran­dom­ly select­ing mem­bers as required by law. The motion argued that ​“Mr. Lance was deprived of a fair and impar­tial grand jury. … There was no rea­son for Mr. Lance to sus­pect that this con­duct had occurred or to seek the spe­cif­ic evi­dence nec­es­sary to show the impact of this ​‘pack­ing’ on the grand jury’s composition.”

At his tri­al, Lance’s attor­neys failed to present any mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence. His appeal lawyers argued that evi­dence that Lance had sus­tained brain dam­age from repeat­ed head trau­mas might have swayed the jury to spare his life. In 2019, three U.S. Supreme Court jus­tices agreed. Dissenting from the Court’s refusal to hear his appeal, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, wrote that the Court’s inac­tion ​“per­mits an egre­gious break­down of basic pro­ce­dur­al safe­guards to go unremedied.” 

Lance’s case was the third in Georgia in the last three months in which courts denied a prisoner’s request for DNA test­ing. Ray Cromartie was exe­cut­ed on November 13, 2019, after unsuc­cess­ful­ly seek­ing DNA test­ing that could have proven his claim he was not the shoot­er. Jimmy Meders also unsuc­cess­ful­ly sought DNA test­ing to prove that a key pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness against him was the shoot­er and that he did not com­mit the mur­der. The courts reject­ed his request, but he was grant­ed clemen­cy on January 16 by the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles just hours before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion based on affi­davits from all the sur­viv­ing jurors that they would have sen­tenced him to life with­out parole if it had been an option. 

In her plea for DNA test­ing in Donnie Lance’s case, Stephanie Cape said, ​“Me and my broth­er deserve to know who did it — whether it’s him or some­one else. We’ve lived our whole life not know­ing for sure. If there’s a chance for actu­al proof, why not do it?”