By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — The state Supreme Court today ordered a lower court to dismiss a lawsuit that had effectively put executions on hold in Arkansas.

In a unanimous decision, the state’s highest court ruled that Frank Williams Jr.’s lawsuit against the Arkansas Department of Correction is moot and directed a Pulaski County circuit judge to dismiss the lawsuit and lift an injunction on Williams’ execution.

Chief Deputy Attorney General Justin Allen said today it may be a month or more before the attorney general’s office is ready to ask Gov. Mike Beebe to set an execution date for Williams. Allen said Williams could ask the state Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling or he could ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his case.

Jennifer Horan of the federal public defenders office in Little Rock said the office would have no comment on today’s ruling.

Williams, sentenced to die for the October 1992 slaying of Lafayette County farmer Clyde Spence, filed his lawsuit last year. He alleged the Department of Correction failed to comply with the Arkansas Administrative Procedures Act when it adopted rules regarding lethal injection without subjecting the rules to public review and accepting public comments, as required by the act.

In August 2008, a Pulaski County circuit judge ruled in favor of Williams and granted an injunction blocking his execution. The attorney general’s office has not sought execution dates for any death-row inmates while Williams’ case has been pending.

Earlier this year, the state Legislature approved Act 1296 of 2009, which writes the state’s lethal projection procedure into law and declares that the procedure is exempt from the Administrative Procedures Act.

In its appeal of the circuit judge’s ruling, the state attorney general’s office argued that the new law rendered Williams’ arguments moot. Williams argued that the law does not specifically state that it is to be applied retroactively, to people sentenced to death before it went into effect.

Williams also claimed the law is flawed because it is not specific enough in setting out the lethal injection procedure. The law leaves him in uncertainty as to whether he will be subjected to a manner of execution that causes pain, thereby increasing his punishment, he argued.

In its opinion today, the Supreme Court said retroactivity is not an issue.

“There was no need for the General Assembly to state that the act may be applied retroactively, because the act will not be ‘retroactively’ applied but will instead apply to all executions held after the act’s enactment, including Williams’,” Justice Jim Gunter wrote in the opinion.

Because it found that the law applies to Williams and renders his lawsuit moot, the court said it did not need to consider his other arguments.

Though Williams still has appeal options, three other death-row inmates in the state have exhausted all appeals, Allen said.

“As to those three, there is nothing in place to stop an execution date from being set, and I expect one or more of them will have execution dates set in the not-too-distant future,” he said.

Williams and three other death-row inmates have an appeal pending before the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that challenges the constitutionality of lethal injection in Arkansas, but no stays of execution have been imposed in that case, Allen said.