RICHMOND, VA - A federal appeals court on Wednesday overturned a lower court's decision to temporarily halt the execution of a triple killer a day before he was scheduled to die. Earlier in the day, a federal judge said authorities should wait until the U.S. Supreme Court rules in a separate case that challenges the way states execute killers.

The nation's highest court could rule later this month in a Florida case that would determine whether death row inmates can file last-minute civil rights challenges claiming their executions would be cruel and unusual punishment. The justices heard arguments in April.

U.S. District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith said she had based her ruling Wednesday the Supreme Court case and on arguments by Percy Walton's attorneys that Virginia's protocols surrounding lethal injection are unconstitutional.

But the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled to overturn Smith's decision, allowing Virginia to move forward with Walton's death sentence according to a spokesman for the attorney general's office.

Walton, whose sanity has been debated for nearly a decade, pleaded guilty in 1997 to the murders of Danville residents Jessie and Elizabeth Kendrick, a couple in their 80s, and 33-year-old Archie Moore. The victims were robbed and shot in the head; Moore's body was found stuffed in a closet, his corpse doused in cologne.

Walton's attorneys also have argued in a petition to the high court that their client has schizophrenia and is incapable of understanding the concept of death, therefore making him ineligible for execution.

Walton declined to be interviewed Wednesday.