ADX Florence is the highest-security prison in the United States. (jzehnder / Adobe Stock)
U.S. authorities are preparing to transfer former federal death row prisoners — currently held in Terre Haute — to a higher-security prison in Colorado.
Sometimes referred to as the “Alcatraz of the Rockies,” the officially named U.S. Penitentiary Florence Administrative Maximum Facility is considered America’s most secure prison.
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Last month, former President Biden commuted the federal death sentences of 37 prisoners to life without parole. Most of them are currently at the federal prison in Terre Haute, which houses U.S. death row. On Wednesday, two days after President Trump returned to the White House, the prisoners began receiving notices detailing the bureau’s plans, according to messages to WFIU/WTIU News from three prisoners in Terre Haute.
Hours after taking the oath of office, Trump issued a series of executive orders including one outlining his administration’s approach to capital punishment.
Part of the order instructed officials at the U.S. Department of Justice to “evaluate the places of imprisonment and conditions of confinement for each of the 37 murderers whose Federal death sentences were commuted by President Biden, and the Attorney General shall take all lawful and appropriate action to ensure that these offenders are imprisoned in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose.”
That order also instructed the attorney general to review the possibility of recharging those who received clemency with capital crimes at the state level.
In the weeks after Biden’s decision to commute their sentences, prisoners reported a flurry of activity as officials prepared to move them off death row.
Prisoners were applying to educational and other programs that weren’t previously available, due to their death sentences.
On Wednesday, however, prisoners began receiving notices that they were to be transferred to ADX Florence. The notices didn’t say when.
“Trump or the prison just told us all today that we will all be going to the super max prison since Trump gave that order yesterday,” James Roane, one of the longest-serving former death row prisoners in Terre Haute, wrote in a message Wednesday.
“It’s punishment for Biden giving us clemency,” Roane wrote.
A federal jury sentenced Roane to death in 1993 for his role in several drug-related murders, along with two codefendants, one of whom the former Trump administration executed in 2021. That administration carried out 12 other executions in Terre Haute.
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Trump’s order included language critiquing former Attorney General Merrick Garland’s decision to place a moratorium on executions as well as Biden’s decision, on Dec. 23, to commute the sentences of most of those on federal death row.
“President Biden 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. He commuted their sentences even though the laws of our Nation have always protected victims by applying capital punishment to barbaric acts like theirs,” he wrote.
“These efforts to subvert and undermine capital punishment defy the laws of our nation, make a mockery of justice, and insult the victims of these horrible crimes. The Government’s most solemn responsibility is to protect its citizens from abhorrent acts, and my Administration will not tolerate efforts to stymie and eviscerate the laws that authorize capital punishment against those who commit horrible acts of violence against American citizens.”
Before Trump took office, prisoners said that they knew it was possible that some of them might end up at ADX Florence.
Prisoners convicted of certain classes of crimes, including violence against other prisoners or prison staff, expected to go there.
ADX Florence also has a “step-down” program for people held under tight security. It’s designed to prepare them to re-enter general population.
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But Friday, prisoners said they received additional notices that made no mention of rehabilitative programs. Instead, they said, the notices referred to conditions designed to house the most dangerous prisoners in the federal system.
The notices that went out Friday said they would have a psychological evaluation for placement in a “Control Unit” at ADX Florence. Conditions in its “Control Unit” are unusually harsh: Communication with the outside world is limited even more than on death row, and prisoners generally can’t interact with one another.
“Not everyone here is child killer,” said Julius Robinson, one of the former death row prisoners, responding to the language in Trump's executive order. Robinson is among those who received notice of an impending move.
“He really should look at each case before he put everyone in the same box,” Robinson wrote of Trump, using an online messaging app.
Robinson was convicted of three drug-related murders in 2002.
Attorneys for Robinson, Roane and other prisoners who received notices about the move to ADX Florence didn’t return calls or reply to emails this week.
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Citing privacy and security concerns, U.S. prison bureau officials declined to say where the prisoners were going or when.
“Those individuals whose death sentences were recently commuted to life without parole will be transferred to an institution commensurate with their respective safety, security, health, and programming needs,” an unnamed U.S prison bureau spokesperson wrote in a statement sent early Friday to WFIU/WTIU News.
“For privacy, safety, and security reasons, we cannot speak specifically to the circumstances relating to any incarcerated individual's designation or re-designation” to a federal institution, including the timing of such designations, according to the spokesperson.
As of Friday, U.S. Bureau of Prison records showed that most of the 37 prisoners originally sentenced to death were still in Terre Haute.
Bill Breeden, a retired Unitarian minister who serves as a spiritual advisor for one of the prisoners in Terre Haute, said he was trying to convince officials there to let him meet with that prisoner sooner than he had planned.
“I think he might try to kill himself,” Breeden said Friday.
