Inmates whose death sentences were commuted by former president Joe Biden are fighting the Trump administration’s efforts to transfer them to a notorious federal supermax prison in Colorado.
A lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia earlier in April on behalf of 21 of the 37 inmates whose sentences were commuted, alleges the Trump administration’s actions in seeking to transfer the inmates to ADX Florence are unconstitutional.
“This is a sham, arbitrary process—not due process,” Rejon Taylor, the lead plaintiff, told Newsweek. “And it will be a lack of due process that gets us all sent to the ADX.”
A spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) declined to comment. Newsweek has contacted the White House via email and the Department of Justice via its website.
This photo taken on February 13, 2019 shows a view of the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, also known as the ADX or “Supermax,” in Florence, Colorado.
Jason Connolly/AFP via Getty Images
The Context
Trump had been expected to restart federal executions upon his return to office. But he was stymied after Biden commuted the death sentences of all but three inmates on federal death row to life in prison without parole. “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted,” Biden said at the time.
On his first day back in office in January, he signed a sweeping executive order that directs the attorney general to seek the death penalty in appropriate federal cases and to help preserve capital punishment in states that have had difficulty obtaining lethal injection drugs. The order also directed the attorney general to evaluate the prison conditions of the inmates whose death sentences were commuted to ensure they “are imprisoned in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose.”
What To Know
The lawsuit, first reported by Bloomberg Law, alleges that Trump’s executive order and a memo from Attorney General Pam Bondi instituted a new procedure replacing the BOP’s usual redesignation process.
“In defiance of the controlling statutes, regulations, and policies governing the BOP redesignation process, Defendants Bondi and [acting deputy attorney general Emil] Bove ordered BOP staff to engage in a new sham process that categorically predetermined that all Plaintiffs—regardless of what statutory BOP redesignation process had determined—will be incarcerated indefinitely in the most oppressive conditions in the entire federal prison system.”
The complaint notes that BOP policies and regulations acknowledge the supermax prison’s “harsh conditions, with a detailed process to be followed before transferring people there, including exclusions for people with medical or mental health conditions that could worsen by virtue of the extreme conditions of solitary confinement at ADX.”
The administration’s actions, the complaint says, violate the bill of attainder and ex post facto clauses of Article 1, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution, the plenary power clause of Article II, Section 2, the equal protection and due process clauses of the Fifth Amendment, the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment as well as the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).
“By categorically condemning Plaintiffs to indefinite incarceration in harsh conditions in response to their receipt of clemency from the previous President, it exceeds the statutory authority granted to the Attorney General and her deputy, and is arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion; it was made without proper notice and comment; and otherwise is not in accordance with law,” the complaint says.
The complaint says that after Biden commuted the sentences of the 37 men on federal death row, BOP began the redesignation process. None of the inmates, who are currently housed at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, were recommended to be transferred to ADX.
Staff concluded that each inmate “should be sent to a high-security USP, including facilities with Institutional Medical and Mental health Care Levels adequate to provide care and treatment for those Plaintiffs with serious and medical and mental health needs, and/or developmental disabilities,” it says.
Those determinations, made in January and February, “should have been final” but Bondi and Bove “overruled BOP’s considered and individualized judgment for each Plaintiff and ordered that Plaintiffs all be categorically redesignated to ADX,” the complaint says.
BOP then “went through the motions of a review process a second time, under the pretense that ADX designations for Plaintiffs were not a foregone conclusion.”
Rejon Taylor is pictured in an undated photograph taken at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Courtesy of Kelley Henry
From the first week of April, BOP issued hearing notices to the inmates, most including “identical grounds for referral to ADX,” the complaint says.
Later in April, BOP administrators conducted hearings by videoconference for each inmate. Many “spoke at the hearings, disputing their bases for referral to ADX,” the complaint says. “For example, they directed the Hearing Administrators to evidence supporting placements elsewhere, such as their successful programming, clean disciplinary records, health care needs, and the injuries they would suffer and the losses they would incur if subjected to extreme isolation at ADX.”
Yet for every inmate, in some cases within minutes or hours, the administrator recommended that ADX placement was “warranted,” the complaint says. Some of the hearing administrator’s reports also included inaccuracies and statements attributed to inmates that they did not make, the complaint says.
“He just listened, and took notes. We connected, a little, and that felt good,” Taylor told Newsweek about his hearing via a prison messaging system. “About 2 hours later, I got his recommendation: ADX.”
Taylor said he had another hearing in mid-April with a different administrator. This administrator has yet to issue a report, he said.
“Seems like she’s giving an appearance of consideration, though we know it’s a foregone conclusion, that we all will be referred and approve for ADX placement,” he said.
The plaintiffs are seeking a judgment holding the defendants’ actions violate the Constitution and the APA and blocking implementation of the executive order and Bondi memo.
The complaint also asks the court to order the administration to “assign Plaintiffs to the BOP facilities and units that BOP had previously determined were appropriate for each Plaintiff according to its statutory process, before the interference and overruling of those determinations by Defendant.”
What People Are Saying
Taylor said in a recent message to Newsweek: “The last few weeks have been challenging. So much uncertainty. But I feel a bit at ease now because I just got a message, that there will be no moves prior to May 16 … I know, I know: I need to be cautious. They still deported the migrants against a court ordering otherwise.”
Scott Taylor, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons, told Newsweek: “The Federal Bureau of Prisons does not comment on pending litigation on matters that are the subject of legal proceedings.”
Trump’s executive order said Biden had commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 “most vile and sadistic rapists, child molesters, and murderers on Federal death row: remorseless criminals who brutalized young children, strangled and drowned their victims, and hunted strangers for sport.”
What’s Next
The BOP’s review of inmate designations is ongoing, the Department of Justice said in a filing on April 17. The filing also said that no transfers to ADX would take place before May 16.
A hearing has been scheduled for 10 a.m. on May 12 to determine whether the transfers will be blocked pending a trial.
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