A federal judge declined to intervene on behalf of 21 former federal death row inmates whom the Trump administration seeks to transfer to the nation’s most restrictive prison facility, ruling on Tuesday that the men had not exhausted other legal avenues to fight their transfers.
In an opinion issued overnight, Judge Timothy J. Kelly of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia wrote that the men, whose sentences were commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in December, had not directly challenged the transfer with the Bureau of Prisons.
“The Bureau of Prisons offers an administrative process for challenging final designations to ADX, and plaintiffs have not completed — or, to the court’s knowledge, even started — that process,” he wrote, using shorthand for the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colo., sometimes called the Alcatraz of the Rockies.
Lawyers for the men had argued that the government’s effort to transfer them to the only federal “supermax” prison, known for its punishing conditions, was driven by animus.
After Mr. Biden commuted the sentences of 37 men, all convicted of murder and facing the death penalty, President Trump lashed out, telling them in a social media post on Christmas Eve to “GO TO HELL!”
Within hours of taking office on Jan. 20, Mr. Trump signed an executive order directing his attorney general to seek the death penalty more regularly — calling it an “essential tool” — and to specifically see to it that the 37 men were “imprisoned in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes.”
During a hearing in May, Carmen Iguina-Gonzalez, a lawyer appearing on behalf of the 21 men who sued to stop the transfer, described in detail the psychological effects that solitary confinement and the other severe prison conditions can have.
She argued that the men would be facing those extreme conditions at the “supermax” facility in Colorado — which she said prison officials themselves refer to as a “clean version of hell” — solely because Mr. Trump sought to override Mr. Biden’s use of his clemency powers.
During a hearing last week, Judge Kelly expressed some doubt that the transfers were being carried out improperly.
While the legal team representing the men raised concerns that some had medical conditions that had not been taken into account as part of the transfer plans, Judge Kelly said he had witnessed other administrative lapses in the prison system and believed at least some of those apparent oversights may have been accidental.
In his ruling, however, he wrote that the men should have the opportunity to exhaust other appeals before being transferred and that the court could ultimately reach a different conclusion.
“Still, the court expects that the Bureau of Prisons — if, as it asserts, it is applying its normal process here — will follow what it maintains is the usual practice of not transferring plaintiffs before their administrative appeals conclude,” he wrote.
Zach Montague is a Times reporter covering the U.S. Department of Education, the White House and federal courts.
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