Man convicted of murdering ex-wife and her boyfriend to be executed in Georgia

Donnie Cleveland Lance was sentenced to death in 1999

A Georgia man convicted more than two decades ago of shooting and killing his ex-wife’s boyfriend and then bludgeoning her to death with the shotgun he had used is scheduled to be executed in Georgia today.

Donnie Cleveland Lance, 66, is set to be executed by lethal injection at 7pm at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, 21 years after he was convicted of killing his former wife, Sabrina “Joy” Lance, and her boyfriend, Dwight “Butch” Wood, in Jackson County.

Mr Lance will become the first inmate in Georgia and the second in the United States to be executed in 2020. The state executed three men in 2019.

Shortly before midnight on 8 November 1997, Mr Lance called his ex-wife’s father, who told him she was not home. Mr Lance then went to Mr Wood’s house, kicked in the front door and shot him with a shotgun. He then beat Sabrina Lance with the butt of the gun, which broke into pieces during the attack, prosecutors said.

Later that morning, Mr Lance told a friend that his ex-wife would not be coming to clean his house that day, that Mr Wood’s father could not “buy him out of hell,” and that the couple were dead, according to court documents.

Mr Lance had a history of abusing his ex-spouse when they were married. He kidnapped her, beat her, tried to strangle her and on one occasion, tried electrocuting her with a car battery. He had also repeatedly threatened to kill her and once asked a relative what it would cost to hire someone to kill her and Mr Wood, court documents said.

But he has denied the killings in court proceedings.

A jury found Mr Lance guilty of murder and sentenced him to die in 1999. In 2009, a state judge overturned the death sentence, ruling that Mr Lance received inadequate representation during his trial. The state Supreme Court overturned the ruling a year later.

The Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles denied a clemency request for Mr Lance on Tuesday.

Mr Lance’s request to the US Supreme Court to halt the execution in order for an appeal to be considered was still pending.

Reuters