🚨 DEADPOOL KILLER WADE WILSON’S LAWYERS JUST ADMITTED FLORIDA’S HIGHEST COURT ALREADY REJECTED THEIR MAIN ARGUMENT — AND THEY’RE NOW OPENLY EYEING THE U.S. SUPREME COURT WHILE HIS TWO DEATH SENTENCES STAY ON THE BOOKS! ⚖️🔥

DEADPOOL KILLER WADE WILSON’S LAWYERS ARE ALREADY LOOKING PAST FLORIDA — WHILE HIS DOUBLE DEATH SENTENCE SITS IN LIMBO

Wade Steven Wilson remains under two death sentences for the 2019 murders of Kristine Melton and Diane Ruiz in Cape Coral, Florida. His Florida Supreme Court appeal, case SC2024-1345, is still listed as open as of October 17, 2026. Yet during a brief February 5, 2026, hearing, his attorney, Michael Ufferman, effectively conceded that Florida precedent had already closed the door on the central constitutional fight — and he preserved the issue for possible review by the U.S. Supreme Court instead.

The case that earned Wilson the media nickname “Deadpool Killer” began on October 6–7, 2019. Wilson met Kristine Melton, then in her mid-30s, at a Fort Myers bar. They went back to her Cape Coral home. While she slept, he strangled her to death in her bed, then stole her car and other property. Hours later, he spotted Diane Ruiz, 43, walking along a Cape Coral street. He pulled over, asked for directions, and lured her into the stolen vehicle. He beat and strangled her, pushed her out, and repeatedly ran her over. Prosecutors later described the killings as acts committed “for the sake of killing.” The jury heard evidence that both murders were heinous, atrocious, and cruel, and that Ruiz’s was also cold, calculated, and premeditated.

Wilson was convicted in June 2024 of two counts of first-degree murder plus related charges. Florida’s capital sentencing law, amended in 2023, no longer requires a unanimous jury recommendation for death. A recommendation can now rest on as few as eight of twelve jurors. In Wilson’s case the jury voted 9–3 for death in Melton’s murder and 10–2 in Ruiz’s. Circuit Judge Nicholas Thompson accepted those recommendations and imposed two death sentences in August 2024, stating that nothing in Wilson’s background or mental state made death disproportionate and that the aggravating factors greatly outweighed any mitigation.

Convicted double-murderer Wade Wilson denied new trial - WBBH

Wilson’s automatic appeal to the Florida Supreme Court raised seven issues. Among them was a constitutional attack on the non-unanimous death-penalty system and an argument that applying the 2023 law to a 2019 crime violated ex post facto protections under both the U.S. and Florida Constitutions. At the time of the murders, Florida law still required a unanimous jury recommendation for death. The defense contended that retroactively lowering that threshold was impermissible.

By the time of oral argument on February 5, 2026, the Florida Supreme Court had already decided Hunt v. State (December 18, 2025) and related cases that rejected the same core constitutional challenges to the 8–4 statute. Ufferman, appearing for Wilson, acknowledged the binding precedent in open court. He spoke for roughly ninety seconds. He told the justices that the court had issued an opinion only about thirty days earlier addressing all the issues in his brief, and that re-arguing those points against settled Florida law would be pointless. He made clear he was preserving the federal constitutional questions so they could be presented, if necessary, to the U.S. Supreme Court. The state’s lawyer had essentially nothing to add and simply asked the court to affirm. The entire argument lasted only a few minutes; one justice reportedly remarked that it “usually doesn’t go this smoothly.”

Ufferman’s firm later issued a statement confirming the strategy: the issues had been fully briefed and preserved; counsel was ethically bound not to ask the Florida Supreme Court to ignore its own recent controlling precedent; and the next proper forum for the ex post facto and Eighth Amendment claims is the U.S. Supreme Court. That does not mean the nation’s highest court will ever hear the case. The Supreme Court grants certiorari in only a small fraction of the petitions it receives. Wilson’s lawyers are simply keeping the constitutional door open while the state-court file remains active.

=Wade Wilson has new death row mugshot | Lee County | winknews.com

As of October 17, 2026, the Florida Appellate Case Information System still shows SC2024-1345 as open. No final opinion affirming or reversing the death sentences has been issued. Wilson remains under two death sentences while the mandatory direct appeal proceeds. He has also faced additional proceedings related to earlier jail incidents, including an attempted escape, but those matters are separate from the capital appeal.

The legal posture is therefore unusual but not unprecedented in capital cases. Defense counsel fully litigated the constitutional objections in written briefs, then used the oral-argument stage to protect the record for federal review rather than waste the court’s time rehashing settled state law. Critics of Florida’s 2023 law see cases like Wilson’s as the natural vehicle for a federal challenge: the murders occurred under the old unanimous-jury rule, yet the new, lower threshold was applied years later. Supporters of the statute argue that the Florida Supreme Court has already upheld it and that non-unanimous recommendations are a legitimate legislative choice that still requires a substantial majority of jurors. Whether the U.S. Supreme Court will ever examine those competing views in this specific case remains entirely up to the justices in Washington.

For the families of Kristine Melton and Diane Ruiz, the legal maneuvering continues more than seven years after the murders. Wilson’s conviction stands, the death sentences remain in place, and the Florida Supreme Court file is still open. His lawyers, however, have already mapped a possible path beyond Tallahassee — preserving a constitutional claim they believe belongs in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, even while the immediate fight stays inside Florida’s appellate system. The state court may yet issue its decision in SC2024-1345. Until it does, and until any subsequent federal petition is resolved, Wade Wilson’s double death sentence hangs in a state of procedural limbo that his defense team is carefully preparing to extend, if necessary, all the way to Washington.