LITTLE ROCK—Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel has moved to make convicted killer Frank Williams Jr. the first inmate in Arkansas to die by lethal injection since the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the execution method.

McDaniel asked Gov. Mike Beebe last week to set an execution date for Williams, according to a letter released Monday by the attorney general’s office.

Williams had joined a lawsuit by three other death-row inmates claiming the state’s execution method amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. An order filed last month by U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright reopened the case, which was put on hold as the Supreme Court weighed a similar challenge.

In the letter dated Thursday, McDaniel noted the lawsuit but said that “all typical appellate and collateral proceedings are at an end in this case and no stay of execution is in effect.

“Thus, the State of Arkansas respectfully requests that a date of execution be set for Mr. Frank Williams Jr. as provided by Arkansas law,” McDaniel wrote.

Williams received a death sentence after being convicted of fatally shooting farmer Clyde Spence of Bradley during a 1992 robbery. Williams had been fired earlier from a prison work-release job at Spence’s farm.

Arkansas has executed 27 death-row inmates since the Supreme Court allowed states to resume executions in 1976. The state’s last execution took place in 2005, when officials executed condemned killer Eric Nance.

Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample said the governor will respond to the request in the next couple of weeks.

“He thoroughly reviews the transcripts for each case we get,” DeCample said. “Of course he’ll want to do that again before setting a date.”

Williams has also filed a lawsuit in Pulaski County Circuit Court to halt his execution, claiming the state violated the Arkansas Administrative Procedures Act in making changes to the lethal injection process without giving public notice and a chance to speak on the changes. The state has asked Judge Tim Fox to dismiss the case.