Plaintiffs have appealed Cole County Circuit Judge Pat Joyce's Monday ruling dismissing their challenge of Missouri's use of pentobarbitol as an execution drug.
Joyce issued a 15-page judgment explaining her dismissal last Friday.
St. Louis lawyer Justin K. Gelfand, representing the four plaintiffs, immediately asked the court of appeals' Western District in Kansas City to order Joyce to take more evidence in the case, but that petition was denied.
Tuesday, along with the notice of appeal, Gelfand asked the appeals court for emergency injunctive relief. That request also was denied, although the appeal from Joyce's ruling remains on the appeals court's docket.
No hearings have been scheduled yet in the case.
In the trial court case in Cole County, Joyce agreed with the state's argument the plaintiffs were attempting "to privately enforce the (federal) Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) and the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) to prevent the scheduled July 14, 2015, execution of David Zink."
Gelfand had told Joyce during Friday's argument, "We are not raising a constitutional challenge to the death penalty.
"We aren't saying that executions are illegal - (and) Mr. Zink is not a plaintiff (or) a party to this case."
Joyce agreed with the Corrections department argument that three different courts - the Missouri Supreme Court and the federal U.S. District Court for Eastern Missouri and the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals - had "recently rejected similar claims made by Zink himself."
Corrections officials executed Zink at 7:33 p.m. Tuesday for the 2001 murder of Amanda Morton, 19.
The lawsuit filed last week argued state officials violate state and federal laws when they use pentobarbitol as the execution drug, and the four plaintiffs had standing as Missouri taxpayers to file the lawsuit and prevent the state from breaking the law.
Joyce listed three reasons for rejecting the lawsuit: "There is no tax-payer standing in this case because the plaintiffs challenge the ordinary operations of the Department of Corrections, and those ordinary operations do not fall within the definition of direct expenditures that may be challenged in a tax-payer standing suit.
"Second, the Missouri Supreme Court has exclusive jurisdiction over suits affecting a death sentence - and that is what this suit really is.
"Third, the (state is) not violating the law."
In her ruling, Joyce wrote: "It is not logical that other parties can step into Zink's place and bring a suit that is, in reality, a challenge to the execution of his death sentence that he could not bring, himself.
"Tax-payer standing is a shield to protect tax-payers from squandering of the public treasury. It is not a sword offenders may use to strike repeated blows and potentially unending blows against the execution of their lawful criminal sentences."