Highlighting concerns over chronic health conditions and Florida’s lethal-injection protocol, legal representatives for death row inmate Frank Walls have swiftly moved to request an emergency intervention from a federal appeals court to postpone his execution set for December 18.

This urgent appeal, lodged with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, follows a decision by U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, who denied the request to pause Walls’ impending execution. Walls, who was found guilty of the 1987 killings of two individuals in Okaloosa County, has also sought intervention from the Florida Supreme Court on separate legal grounds.

The essence of the appeal lies in the argument that executing Walls via lethal injection would breach the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

In support of their case, Walls’ attorneys referenced a medical assessment from July highlighting his significant health issues, including hypertension, high cholesterol, a thyroid condition, and chronic sleep apnea. They also raised concerns about procedural errors, noting that the Florida Department of Corrections has conducted an unusually high number of executions this year, allegedly using expired drugs and incorrect drug dosages.

The filing further argues that due to his medical complexities, Walls may face a higher risk of developing pulmonary edema—a condition characterized by excess fluid in the lungs—during the execution process.

“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.