The faces of Georgia's Death Row

Photo application by Rhonda Cook, Mandi Albright and Pete Corson
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Donnie Cleveland Lance, 65, was executed by lethal injection on Jan. 29, 2020. He was the first prisoner to be executed in Georgia this year.

Lance was sentenced to die for the 1997 murders of his ex-wife and her boyfriend. Sabrina "Joy" Lance was beaten to death and Dwight "Butch" Wood was shot inside Wood’s Jackson county trailer. Lance maintained his innocence and his grown children spent months unsuccessfully calling for DNA testing to confirm whether he killed their mother.

The state's previous execution was of Ray Jefferson Cromartie, who died by lethal injection on Nov. 13, 2019. (In early 2020, Jimmy Meders, another Death Row inmate, had his life spared at the last minute by the state parole board.) Georgia executed three prisoners in 2019. In 2016, the state executed nine inmates, but the pace of executions slowed after that, with a single one in 2017 and two in 2018. There are several other inmates on Georgia’s Death Row who might see the last of their appeals rejected soon.

Click on each photo below to learn more about the inmate pictured. After opening a photo, you may scroll backwards or forwards to see the next photo.

» INTERACTIVES: 5 things to know: Georgia's Death Row and the death penalty | The Marshall Project

 | How lethal injection works

» PHOTOS: Those executed in Georgia and their victims | VIDEO: Georgia's 10 longest-serving Death Row inmates | LIST: Georgia's most notorious serial killers

Source: Georgia Dept. of Corrections