A.C.L.U. Lawsuit Seeks to Prevent Transfer of Former Federally Death-Sentenced Prisoners to ​“Supermax” Prison

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and sev­er­al oth­er orga­ni­za­tions rep­re­sent­ing a group of for­mer­ly fed­er­al­ly death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers filed a fed­er­al law­suit on April 16, 2025 seek­ing to pre­vent their trans­fer to the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado, known as ​“ADX.” The trans­fers were threat­ened by the Department of Justice in response to President Donald Trump’s January 20^th Executive Order 14164, which direct­ed Attorney General Pam Bondi to ​“ensure” that the pris­on­ers who received com­mu­ta­tions of their death sen­tences in the wan­ing days of the Biden Administration ​“are impris­oned in con­di­tions con­sis­tent with the mon­stros­i­ty of their crimes and the threats they pose.” 

ADX is clas­si­fied as a ​“super­max” prison and hous­es pris­on­ers deemed to be the most dan­ger­ous and in need of the high­est lev­els of con­trol and super­vi­sion. It was designed specif­i­cal­ly to house pris­on­ers who had com­mit­ted extreme vio­lence against staff or oth­er pris­on­ers while incar­cer­at­ed. Prisoners at ADX are housed in sin­gle cells and are under 24-hour super­vi­sion; in the high­est con­trol unit, pris­on­ers are kept in soli­tary con­fine­ment for 23 hours a day. 

The law­suit, filed by 21 of the 37 pris­on­ers who received com­mu­ta­tions, alleges that in the days after the com­mu­ta­tions, Bureau of Prisons staff eval­u­at­ed the com­mut­ed pris­on­ers for trans­fer, and none of the 21 were deter­mined appro­pri­ate for ADX. However, the law­suit alleges, after President Trump’s January 20 Executive Order, the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Prisons depart­ed from estab­lished poli­cies and pro­ce­dures to effec­tu­ate their trans­fer to a prison with the most oppres­sive con­di­tions in the fed­er­al prison sys­tem. The law­suit alleges that trans­fer­ring them to the harsh con­di­tions at ADX would vio­late the U.S. Constitution, specif­i­cal­ly: the bill of attain­der and ex post fac­to claus­es of Article I, Section 9; the ple­nary pow­er clause of Article II, Section 2; the equal pro­tec­tion and pro­ce­dur­al due process claus­es of the Fifth Amendment; and the Eighth Amendment’s pro­hi­bi­tion on cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ments. In con­nec­tion with the law­suit, lawyers asked the court to tem­porar­i­ly enjoin the DOJ from ​“the unlaw­ful and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al” transfer. 

At a hear­ing on April 17^th, a lawyer from the Department of Justice ini­tial­ly equiv­o­cat­ed when asked for assur­ances that the pris­on­ers would not be trans­ferred until the court had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to eval­u­ate the mer­its of the law­suit. But lat­er that day, after being pressed by U.S. District Court Judge Timothy J. Kelly, the DOJ agreed that the pris­on­ers would not be moved until May 16 at the ear­li­est. A hear­ing sched­uled for May 12, 2025, will deter­mine whether the court will block the trans­fers pend­ing a tri­al on the merits.