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

[January 29, 2020]    By Brendan O'Brien

(Reuters) - 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 on Wednesday.

Donnie Cleveland Lance, 66, is set to be executed by lethal injection at 7 p.m. EST (0000 GMT) 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.

Lance would be 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 Nov. 8, 1997, Lance called his ex-wife's father, who told him she was not home. Lance then went to 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, Lance told a friend that his ex-wife would not be coming to clean his house that day, that Wood's father could not “buy him out of hell," and that the couple were dead, according to court documents.

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 Wood, court documents said.

But he has denied the killings in court proceedings.

A jury found Lance guilty of murder and sentenced him to die in 1999. In 2009, a state judge overturned the death sentence, ruling that 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 Lance on Tuesday.

Lance's request to the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the execution in order for an appeal to be considered was still pending.

(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Chicago; Editing by Peter Cooney)

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