WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from transferring 20 inmates with commuted death sentences to the nation’s maximum security federal prison.
US District Judge Timothy Kelly ruled late Wednesday that the government cannot send former death row inmates to the “Supermax” federal prison in Florence, Colorado, because it would likely violate their Fifth Amendment due process rights.
Kelly cited evidence that officials from the Republican administration “made it clear” to the federal Bureau of Prisons that the inmates were to be sent to ADX Florence – “an administrative maximum” – to punish them because Democratic President Joe Biden had commuted their death sentences.
“At least for now, they will continue to serve a life sentence for their heinous crimes where they are currently in prison,” 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, commuting their sentences to life imprisonment.
On his first day back in office, Trump issued an executive order ordering Attorney General Pam Bondi to house the 37 prisoners “in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose.”
Twenty of the 37 prisoners are plaintiffs in the case before Kelly, who issued a preliminary injunction blocking their transfers to Florence while the case continues. All were held in prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, when Biden commuted their death sentences.
The Government’s lawyers argued that the Bureau has broad authority to decide to which facilities the inmates should be re-designated after their commutation.
The judge concluded that the inmates did not have a meaningful opportunity to challenge their reassignment because it appears that 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.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs say inmates there live alone, eat their meals and shower in cells roughly the size of a parking space.
The Government lawyers said that other courts have decided that the conditions are not objectively cruel and unusual.