A US federal appeals court has lifted a stay of execution granted to serial killer Joseph Franklin in the latest twist of a legal battle.
The ruling came just hours after a lower court had ruled that Missouri must resolve a dispute over the type of lethal injections used in executions.
It means in theory Missouri could carry out the execution on Wednesday.
Franklin, 63, was sentenced to death for killing one man and wounding two others outside a synagogue in 1977.
The white supremacist was also convicted of a series of other racially motivated murders.
'Cruel and unusual'US and EU manufacturers have been cutting off the supply of drugs used for lethal injections in recent years in an attempt to distance themselves from executions.
As a result, Missouri - which long used a lethal three-drug cocktail for executions - has changed the drugs it uses three times in as many months.
The corrections department most recently turned to pentobarbital - a short-acting barbiturate that can induce death in high doses - made through an anonymous compounding pharmacy, as used by several other states.
But on Tuesday, Franklin's lawyers argued in federal court that using this drug would violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
US District Court Judge Nanette Laughrey agreed, saying: "Franklin has been afforded no time to research the risk of pain associated with the department's new protocol, the quality of the pentobarbital provided, and the record of the source of the pentobarbital."
A second stay of execution was also granted on Tuesday on grounds of Franklin's lack of competency, reported CNN.
Now both stays have been overturned by the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled early on Wednesday that Franklin's lawyers had not provided sufficient evidence to warrant a stay of execution.
Barring an intervention from the Supreme Court, Missouri could now choose to execute Franklin at any time on Wednesday, as the death warrant remains valid.
Franklin was to be executed for shooting a man dead outside a Missouri synagogue in 1977 - one of some 20 killings in which he targeted black and Jewish people across several states.
In 1978 he shot Hustler publisher Larry Flynt after seeing a picture of a mixed-race couple in one of his magazines, and in 1980 he wounded civil rights leader Vernon Jordan.
However, Mr Flynt - who was left partially paralysed in the attack - opposes the death penalty and had backed the appeal by convicts on Missouri's death row.
In an interview with the St Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper published on Monday, Franklin argues he has renounced his racist views.
He now says his motivation was "illogical", partly a consequence of an abusive upbringing, and that when he interacted with black people in jail, "I saw they were people just like us".
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