Note: This story has been updated from its original publication in 2020.
Donnie Lance was executed January 2020. It was Georgia’s lone execution in 2020 and its 75th since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court reinstituted capital punishment.
Lance was executed for the 1997 murders of his ex-wife and her boyfriend in Jackson County
Here is a look at some of Georgia’s most notorious executions:
»MORE: Death Row and the death penalty in Georgia
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JOHN ELDON SMITH: Smith was the first person executed in Georgia after capital punishment was reinstated. Smith died in Georgia's electric chair on Dec. 15, 1983, for the shotgun murders of Ronald Akins and his wife Juanita in August 1974. Photo: Macon Telegraph/File
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IVON RAY STANLEY: Stanley was convicted of the shooting of insurance collector Clifford Floyd in Decatur County in April 1976. Floyd was buried alive. Stanley was executed in July 1984. Photo: Ga. Dept. of Corrections
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JEROME BOWDEN: Bowden was convicted of stabbing Kathryn Striker, 55, and her paralyzed, bedridden mother, 76, to death with a butcher knife in October 1976 during a burglary at the women’s Muscogee County home. Kathryn Stryker's skull was beaten in. Bowden was executed in June 1986. Photo: Ga. Dept. of Corrections
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TIMOTHY W. McCORQUODALE: In January 1974, the mutilated body of 17-year-old Donna Marie Dixon was found in a garbage dumpster in Clayton County. McCorquodale was convicted of her murder by strangulation. Dixon was tortured, raped and sodomized before her death. In July 1980, McCorquodale was one of four Death Row inmates to escape from the maximum security prison in Reidsville, Ga. He was captured in North Carolina two days after his escape after a standoff with police. McCorquodale was executed in September 1987. Photo: Ga. Dept. of Corrections
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WARREN McCLESKEY: During a May 1978 furniture store robbery, McCleskey shot and killed Atlanta Police Officer Frank Schlatt. McCleskey denied shooting Schlatt but later admitted the shooting to a co-defendant and a fellow jail inmate. In September 1991, McCleskey was electrocuted. AJC FILE
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WILLIAM HENRY HANCE: Hance, an Army private stationed at Fort Benning in Columbus, was convicted of the murders of Karen Hickman, Irene Thirkield and Brenda Faison during 1977-78. The women, all prostitutes, were killed by beatings with a jack handle. Hance's killings occurred during the same period that serial killer Carlton Gary, the “Stocking Strangler,” was preying on Columbus-area women. Hance was electrocuted in March 1994. Photo: murderpedia.org
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TERRY MICHAEL MINCEY: In April 1982, Mincey and two accomplices robbed a Macon convenience store. He then shot an off-duty Bibb County firefighter and store clerk Paulette Riggs, whom Mincey robbed of $40 before ordering her out of the store. When Riggs began to run from Mincey, he shot at her and she fell. Mincey then shot Riggs in the head. In October 2001, Mincey became the first person to be executed in Georgia by lethal injection. Photo: Ga. Dept. of Corrections
»RELATED: The faces of Georgia’s Death Row
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JOSE MARTINEZ HIGH: High was convicted of the murder of an 11-year-old boy, Bonnie Bulloch, during a July 1976 armed robbery and kidnapping at a Crawfordsville, Ga., Amoco station. Bulloch had been helping his stepfather, Henry Phillips, the station operator, when High and accomplices robbed the store, kidnapping Phillips and Bulloch. The pair were ordered to lie on the ground. Henry was shot in the temple and wrist, and the boy was shot in the head. High was executed in November 2001. Photo: Ga. Dept. of Corrections
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BYRON ASHLEY PARKER: Parker was convicted of the rape, kidnapping and strangulation murder of 11-year-old Christie Ann Griffith in June 1984. Parker was on felony probation at the time of the killing. He was executed in December 2001. Photo: Ga. Dept. of Corrections
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CARL JUNIOR ISAACS: Isaacs was convicted of the May 14, 1973, rape, robbery and mass murder of six members of the Alday family in Seminole County, Ga., after escaping from a Maryland penal institution. Isaacs, his brother Billy, half-brother Wayne Coleman and friend George Dungee burglarized the home of one Alday family member, which led to the shootings of Jerry Alday, his father Ned, Jerry’s brother Chester, and Ned’s brother Aubrey. Jerry Alday’s wife, Mary, was raped repeatedly and kidnapped. She was killed by Dungee. Isaacs was put to death almost 30 years to the date of the 1973 killing spree, dying by lethal injection on May 6, 2003. Isaacs was the longest-serving inmate on Death Row in any state. Photo: Ga. Dept. of Corrections
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TROY DAVIS: Davis was convicted of the shooting death of Savannah Police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail after Davis struck a homeless man in the head with a pistol at a Burger King in August 1989. Davis attempted to flee when MacPhail responded to the scene. Davis shot MacPhail three times, including once in the face. Several witnesses who placed Davis at the crime scene, identifying him as the shooter, recanted their accounts years later. Davis was executed September 2011. Photo: Unknown
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ANDREW HOWARD BRANNAN: Brannan was convicted of the January 1998 shooting death of Laurens County Sheriff's Deputy Kyle Dinkheller after Dinkheller pulled Brannan over for speeding. Dinkheller's murder was captured on a patrol car video dashboard and is used as training material in police academies nationwide. Brannan claimed he suffered from PTSD stemming from his Vietnam military service, but he was found guilty of murder in January 2000 and executed in January 2015. Photo: Ga. Dept. of Corrections/AP
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TRAVIS CLINTON HITTSON: Former Navy sailor Travis Clinton Hittson was sentenced to die in Houston County for murdering a shipmate, Conway Utterbeck. Along with another shipmate, Hittson then dismembered Utterbeck’s body, burying some body parts in Georgia and taking the rest to Pensacola, where the aircraft carrier was based. Hittson was executed on Feb. 17, 2016. He had been on Death Row since 1993. Photo: Ga. Dept. of Corrections
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GREGORY PAUL LAWLER: Lawler was convicted of murdering John Sowa, a 28-year-old Atlanta policeman, and wounding Sowa’s partner, Pat Cocciolone, on Oct. 12, 1997, just moments after the two officers walked Lawler’s intoxicated girlfriend to the front door of the apartment they shared. Lawler was executed on Oct. 19, 2016. Photo: AP
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CARLTON GARY: Gary was executed March 15, 2018, for murdering three elderly women in Columbus in the late 1970s. Known as the “Stocking Strangler,” seven deaths were attributed to Gary even though he was ultimately tried for the murders of only three women. For seven months in 1977 and 1978, the murders paralyzed Columbus and terrorized older women living in the community. Photo: Ga. Dept. of Corrections
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