WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from transferring 20 inmates with commuted death sentences to the nation’s highest security federal prison, warning that officials cannot employ a “sham” process for deciding where to incarcerate the prisoners for the rest of their lives.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ruled late Wednesday that the government cannot send the former death row inmates to the “Supermax” federal prison in Florence, Colorado, because it likely would violate their Fifth Amendment rights to due process.
Kelly cited evidence that officials from the Republican administration “made it clear” to the federal Bureau of Prisons that the inmates had to be sent to ADX Florence — “administrative maximum" — to punish them because Democratic President Joe Biden had commuted their death sentences.
“At least for now, they will remain serving life sentences for their heinous crimes where they are currently imprisoned,” wrote Kelly, who was nominated to the bench by President Donald Trump.
In December 2024, less than a month before Trump returned to the White House, Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row, converting their punishments to life imprisonment.
On his first day back in office, Trump issued an executive order directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to house the 37 inmates “in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose.”
Twenty of the 37 inmates are plaintiffs in the lawsuit before Kelly, who issued a preliminary injunction blocking their transfers to Florence while the lawsuit proceeds. All were incarcerated in Terre Haute, Indiana, when Biden commuted their death sentences.
Government lawyers argued that the bureau has broad authority to decide what facilities the inmates should be redesignated for after their commutations.
“BOP’s designation decisions are within its exclusive purview and are intended to preserve the safety of inmates, employees, and surrounding communities,” they wrote.
The judge concluded that the inmates have not had a meaningful opportunity to challenge their redesignations because it appears the outcome of the review process was predetermined.
"But the Constitution requires that whenever the government seeks to deprive a person of a liberty or property interest that the Due Process Clause protects — whether that person is a notorious prisoner or a law-abiding citizen — the process it provides cannot be a sham," Kelly wrote.
The Florence prison has housed some of the most notorious criminals in federal custody, including Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. The prison is “unmatched in its draconian conditions,” the inmates' attorneys argued.
“The categorical redesignations challenged here deprived Plaintiffs of an opportunity to show why they should not be condemned to a life bereft of human contact, in a cell the size of a parking spot, where they will see nothing out the window but a strip of sky,” they wrote.
Government attorneys said other courts have held that the conditions are not objectively cruel and unusual.
“Plaintiffs fail to show that conditions at ADX are atypical for them,” they wrote.
