A prison in Terre Haute houses federal death row.
(AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
Twenty-one former death row prisoners at the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute are suing President Donald Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Federal Bureau of Prisons to block their possible relocation to a high-security facility in Colorado.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday by the ACLU and other rights groups in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that the Trump administration is seeking to punish 37 former death row prisoners who received clemency from former president Joe Biden.
Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 prisoners on federal death row weeks before President Donald Trump returned to the White House. Biden said he made the decision, in part, out of concern that Trump would seek to restart executions at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute that houses federal death row.
“Our lawsuit challenges this unilateral categorical decision to move all people who received a commutation from President Biden — without any justification — as the unconstitutional act of political retribution that it is,” Corene Kendrick, deputy director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project, said in an interview Wednesday.
Kendrick said the U.S. prison bureau “upended its usual thorough, individualized process for looking at where people should be placed in the federal prison system.”
Instead, she said, the bureau “has categorically decided that all of these people, for no other reason than the fact that they received a commutation from Joe Biden, needed to be moved to the most harsh federal prison in the United States.”
Prisoners currently held in the “Special Confinement Unit,” or federal death row, say prison staff recently started holding administrative hearings about placements in other federal prisoners elsewhere in the United States. In almost every case, they say, prison officials are reaching the same conclusion: recommendation for placement at ADX. The prison in rural Colorado is considered the most secure in the United States. It’s where prisoners considered too dangerous for standard incarceration are held.
But many of the prisoners whose death sentences were overturned say they’ve never been deemed a risk to prison staff or fellow inmates. And yet, they are being routinely recommended for relocation at ADX as quickly as two hours after their hearings.
“The Bureau of Prisons is currently in the middle of holding these sham hearings where they are telling the incarcerated person that it doesn't matter that they have serious medical issues or serious mental health issues or that they're elderly, that every single one of them is going to go to ADX in Florence, Colorado,” Kendrick said.
The lawsuit cites statements from President Trump and other administration officials as evidence that the prisoners are being punished.
On his first day back in the White House, Trump signed an executive order reinstating the federal death and condemning Biden’s commutations. It instructed U.S. justice officials to review the conditions of confinement of the 37 clemency recipients and to ensure they are consistent with “the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose.”
The lawsuit points out that conditions at ADX are far harsher than at other prisons, including the federal prison in Terre Haute where they’re being held.
A spokesperson for the U.S. prison bureau says the agency doesn’t comment on pending litigation or matters subject to legal proceedings.
