A federal appeals court has rejected a request for a stay of execution of Frank Walls, who is scheduled Thursday to become the 19th Florida inmate put to death by lethal injection this year.
A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Saturday issued a nine-page opinion turning down a request to halt the execution. The opinion came two days after the Florida Supreme Court also refused to block the execution.
Saturday’s opinion upheld a decision by U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, who denied a stay after Walls’ attorneys raised issues about the inmate’s chronic health problems and the state’s lethal-injection procedure.
A motion filed by Walls’ attorneys at the Atlanta-based appeals court contended 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. They argued that would violate the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
But the appeals court said Walls had long known about his health conditions and waited too long to raise the issues. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a death warrant on Nov. 18.
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“As his complaint alleges, complications arising from drugs used in Florida’s protocol have been well-documented for years,” Chief Judge William Pryor wrote in the opinion joined by Judges Robin Rosenbaum and Jill Pryor. “For example, Walls alleges that the post-execution autopsies of four Florida inmates in February 2018, May 2023, August 2024, and April 2025, suggested that they suffered from pulmonary edema during their execution. Even viewing the April execution as an acceptable reference point, Walls waited seven months to file his complaint. And since at least 2017, Walls has suffered from several chronic health conditions — obstructive sleep apnea, hypertension, low blood oxygenation, and obesity — that he now alleges put him at risk of painful pulmonary edema.”
In seeking the stay, Walls’ attorneys cited a July medical exam that detailed the health problems of the 354-pound Walls. They 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.
“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.
Walls, 58, was convicted in the July 22, 1987, murders of Edward Alger and Ann Peterson, who died of gunshot wounds after Walls broke into their Okaloosa County home, according to court documents.
The Florida Supreme Court decision Thursday that refused to halt the execution focused, in part, on arguments by Walls’ attorneys that he is intellectually disabled and that executing him would violate the ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Typically, attorneys for condemned inmates file final appeals at the U.S. Supreme Court, though it was not immediately clear Monday whether such appeals had been filed for Walls.
Florida in 2025 has far exceeded the state’s modern-era record for executions in a year. The previous record was eight executions in 1984 and 2014. The modern era represents the time since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, after a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision halted it.
