WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from transferring 20 inmates on commutation of their death sentences to the nation’s maximum-security federal prison.
U.S. 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 might violate their Fifth Amendment due process rights.
Kelly cited evidence that Republican administration officials “made it clear” to the federal Bureau of Prisons that the inmates must be sent to ADX Florence – the “administrative maximum” – to punish them because Democratic President Joe Biden had commuted their death sentences.
“For now at least, they will continue to serve life sentences in prison for the heinous crimes they committed,” Kelly, who was nominated to the bench by President Donald Trump, wrote.
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, changing their sentences to life imprisonment.
Trump issued an executive order on his first day in office directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to house the 37 inmates “under conditions consistent with their crimes and the threat they pose.”
Twenty of the 37 inmates were plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed by Kelly, who issued a preliminary injunction blocking their transfer to Florence while the lawsuit was ongoing. All were being held in Terre Haute, Indiana, when Biden commuted their sentences.
Government lawyers argued that the bureau has broad authority to decide which facilities inmates should be reassigned to after their sentences are commuted.
The judge concluded that inmates had no meaningful opportunity to challenge their redesignation because the outcome of the review process appeared to be predetermined.
“But the Constitution requires that whenever the government seeks to deprive a person of liberty or property interests protected by the Due Process Clause—whether that person is a notorious prisoner or a law-abiding citizen—the process it offers must not be a sham,” Kelly wrote.
The Florence prison houses some of the most notorious criminals in federal prison, including college bomber Ted Kaczynski, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs said inmates there live alone, eat and shower in cells about the size of a parking space.
Government lawyers said other courts have held that the conditions were not objectively cruel and unusual.
