Raising issues about chronic health problems and Florida’s lethal-injection process, attorneys for condemned killer Frank Walls on Wednesday filed an emergency motion asking a federal appeals court to issue a stay of his scheduled Dec. 18 execution. – Raising issues about chronic health problems and Florida’s lethal-injection process, attorneys for condemned killer Frank Walls on Wednesday filed an emergency motion asking a federal appeals court to issue a stay of his scheduled Dec. 18 execution.
The motion, filed at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, came a day after U.S. District Judge Mark Walker refused to halt the execution of Walls, who was convicted in the 1987 murders of two people in Okaloosa County. Walls also has asked the Florida Supreme Court to stop the execution on different grounds.
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The appeals-court motion is rooted in arguments that putting Walls to death by lethal injection would violate the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Walls’ attorneys cited a July medical exam that indicated the 354-pound Walls has conditions such as hypertension, high cholesterol, a thyroid disorder and chronic sleep apnea. It also alleged errors as the Florida Department of Corrections has carried out a record number of executions this year, including using expired drugs and preparing incorrect quantities of drugs.
The motion contends Walls could be at an increased risk during the execution of suffering pulmonary edema — a condition that involves too much fluid in the lungs — because of his medical problems.
“At issue here is the link between Walls’s complex health issues and the resultant increased risk of an intolerably painful death by pulmonary edema. … The gruesome details of pulmonary edema — and the fact that it has been documented in the autopsies of other prisoners executed by the (lethal injection) protocol and is therefore a known possibility — is crucial to the claim that Walls is in danger of intense pain and suffering, in violation of the Eighth Amendment, should the protocol be applied to him,” Walls’ attorneys wrote.
The motion also linked the health issues to allegations that the Department of Corrections has made errors in using the lethal-injection process in some of the modern-era record 18 executions this year.
“This is a case-specific challenge to defendants (the Department of Corrections) using their protocol to kill a medically vulnerable prisoner like Walls during a sloppy, breakneck pace of executions,” Walls’ attorneys wrote.
But in rejecting the arguments Tuesday, Walker said Walls could have raised the issues long before Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his death warrant on Nov. 18. Walker wrote that a law “does not permit a last-minute stay in this case when Mr. Walls’s claim could have been brought months, if not years, before his death warrant was signed.”
“In short, Mr. Walls has demonstrated that, for years, some states and federal courts have questioned the continued use of — or completely abandoned — a three-drug protocol like Florida’s to avoid cruel and unusual executions,” Walker wrote. “This history is publicly known, well-documented, and compelling evidence that Mr. Walls could have challenged the … protocol, as applied to him, well before his death warrant was signed in November 2025.”
Walls was convicted in the July 22, 1987, murders of Edward Alger and Ann Peterson, who died of gunshot wounds after Walls broke into their home, according to court documents.
In asking the Florida Supreme Court to halt the execution, Walls’ attorneys have argued, in part, that he is intellectually disabled and executing him would violate the Eighth Amendment for that reason.