Donnie Cleveland Lance v. Georgia

A Georgia trial court sentenced petitioner Donnie Cleveland Lance to death for the murders of Joy Lance and Dwight (“Butch”) Woods, Jr. despite no physical evidence directly connecting petitioner to the crime and no DNA testing of the physical evidence. The lack of testing may have been reasonable in 1999, when petitioner was tried and convicted, but in 2019 the Georgia Bureau of Investigation adopted the TrueAllele™ system of probabilistic genotyping for DNA testing—a now widely available system that could be used to test the shotgun shells, wood fragments, and latent fingerprints recovered from the crime scene. Testing could exonerate petitioner and point to the real perpetrator. Georgia law provides a right to DNA testing in the context of an extraordinary motion for new trial. O.C.G.A. § 5-5-41(c). Petitioner has met the statutory requirements to avail himself of this right. Nonetheless, the Georgia state courts have denied testing by imposing additional arbitrary procedural and substantive requirements that are not contained in the statute. This departure from ordinary procedures and denial of petitioner’s statutory right has deprived him of constitutional due process and equal protection. If this Court does not intervene, petitioner will be executed on January 29, 2020. The questions presented are: 1. Was petitioner denied due process and equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment by the state courts’ imposition of extra-statutory