Clemency hearing for Jackson Co death row inmate today

The state Board of Pardons and Paroles holds a clemency hearing today in Atlanta in the case of Donnie Lance: the 66 year-old Jackson County man is on Georgia's death row. He is scheduled to be executed tomorrow night for the murders of his ex-wife and her boyfriend. Both of them were killed in Jackson County in November of 1997.

From Joshua Sharpe, AJC…

The board will meet Tuesday morning to consider the clemency petition for Lance, who was convicted in 1999 in Jackson County of beating to death his ex-wife, Joy Lance, and fatally shooting her boyfriend, Dwight "Butch" Wood Jr. Lance has maintained his innocence, and his adult children, whose mother was Joy Lance, have in recent months unsuccessfully called for new DNA testing to confirm whether he committed the crime.

In a letter attached to the clemency petition, the children said the pain of losing their mother would be compounded if the state kills their father.

“We have spent our whole lives with this huge gaping hole in our hearts,” Stephanie Cape and her brother Jessie Lance wrote, “but at least we’ve had dad at our sides. It’s almost impossible to imagine that it could get worse.”

Lance’s clemency request comes just weeks after the parole board commuted the death sentence of Jimmy Meders to life without parole. That rare commutation, the board’s first since 2014, hinged largely on the fact that the jury in Meders’ case had expressed their desire to sentence him to life without parole, but it wasn’t legally allowed at the time of the trial. Such a sentence was a legal option when jurors sentenced Lance to die.