A state court judge on Friday denied condemned inmate Donnie Lance's request to stay his execution scheduled to take place on Jan. 29.
Lance’s lawyers had asked Butts County Superior Court Judge Thomas Wilson to first decide whether the grand jury that handed up Lance’s indictment was illegally stacked with friends of the district attorney and those the prosecutor knew would be on his side. But Wilson said Lance had previously raised the issue and it had already been rejected.
Lance, 65, sits on death row for the November 1997 murders in Jackson County of his ex-wife, 39-year-old Joy Lance, and her boyfriend, 33-year-old Dwight "Butch" Wood. Joy Lance was beaten to death and Wood was killed by two shotgun blasts. Lance is to be put to death by a lethal injection of pentobarbital.
Lawyers from the state Attorney General’s Office had asked Wilson not to delay the execution. Lance has appealed his convictions for more than 20 years and his latest motion contending corruption in the selection of grand jurors was unsuccessfully litigated years ago, they said.
In a recent court filing, Lance’s lawyers said they uncovered new evidence about the grand jury process through interviews and historical grand jury research conducted in 2018 and 2019. At the time of Lance’s indictment, District Attorney Tim Madison “packed” the grand jury with individuals he knew and who repeatedly served as grand jurors through terms of court, the filing said.
Madison is no longer DA. In 2008, he pleaded guilty to felony charges for his role in a payroll theft scheme while he was in office. He was sentenced to six years in prison and ordered to pay $40,000 in restitution.
By allegedly stacking the grand jury, the motion said, Madison deprived Lance of his constitutional right to a fair trial.
“To countenance this error in even a single capital case undermines the reliability of the death penalty as a reflection of contemporary moral values,” the motion said. A conviction spawned from a tainted grand jury, the motion added, also violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
Previously, Lance had asked for DNA testing of the state's evidence against him, a request supported by his son Jessie Lance and daughter Stephanie Cape. Both children have stayed in touch with their father over the past 20 years even though he was convicted of killing their mother.
Wilson, at the urging of the state AG’s office, denied that request and the Georgia Supreme Court recently declined to hear Lance’s appeal of that ruling. On Thursday, Lance’s lawyers appealed that denial to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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