Judge Timothy Kelly on Wednesday issued a preliminary injunction that temporarily prevents the Trump administration from moving 20 former death row inmates—each of whom received a commutation of their federal death sentences—to ADX Florence, the Bureau of Prisons’ highest-security federal prison in Florence, Colorado.
In a ruling late Wednesday, Kelly said the government cannot send the inmates to ADX Florence because it likely would violate their Fifth Amendment rights to due process, AP reported. The decision leaves the plaintiffs serving life sentences while their lawsuit proceeds in federal court.
Kelly wrote that officials from the Republican administration “made it clear” to the Bureau of Prisons that the inmates had to be designated for ADX Florence, described in the ruling as “administrative maximum.” The judge said the rationale for that designation was tied to punishing the prisoners because Democratic President Joe Biden had commuted their death sentences.
Kelly also stated that, at least for now, the inmates would remain in their current facilities serving life sentences for their crimes. The plaintiffs’ case centers on whether the government’s process for redesignating custody levels after commutations gives prisoners a meaningful chance to contest the outcome.
The injunction targets plans affecting 20 of the 37 inmates whose death sentences were commuted in December 2024, shortly before Trump returned to the White House. Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row, converting their punishments to life imprisonment.
After taking office, Trump issued an executive order directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to house the commuted inmates “in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose,” according to AP’s account. The administration subsequently sought to move inmates including those plaintiffs, who were incarcerated in Terre Haute, Indiana, when their death sentences were commuted.
Government lawyers told the court that the Bureau of Prisons has broad authority to decide how facilities should be redesignated for inmates after commutations. They argued that BOP’s designation decisions are intended to preserve safety for inmates, employees, and nearby communities, AP reported.
Kelly rejected that approach, saying the inmates did not have a meaningful opportunity to challenge their redesignations because the outcome appears to have been predetermined. The judge concluded that the Constitution requires more than a sham procedure whenever the government seeks to deprive a person of a protected liberty or property interest, regardless of whether the person is a “notorious prisoner.”
The ruling also included discussion of the conditions at the Florence facility, which houses some of the most notorious federal prisoners, including Ted Kaczynski, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, AP said. The inmates’ attorneys argued the prison’s conditions are “unmatched in its draconian conditions,” and they characterized ADX as a setting that would severely restrict human contact and sensory environment.
Government attorneys countered that other courts have found that ADX conditions are not objectively cruel and unusual and said the plaintiffs failed to show the conditions at ADX are atypical for them, according to AP. For now, Kelly’s injunction bars transfers of the 20 plaintiffs to ADX Florence while the legal challenge continues.