The Department of Justice is moving forward with plans to transfer a group of federal inmates — whose death sentences were commuted by former President Joe Biden near the end of his term — to a supermax prison facility.
Attorney General Pam Bondi told National Review that the Bureau of Prisons intends to relocate “most of the remaining inmates who had death sentences commuted by Biden” to the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, commonly known as ADX, located in Fremont County, Colorado. ADX is the nation’s most secure federal prison and houses male inmates deemed exceptionally dangerous.
According to the administration, the planned transfers are meant, in part, to enhance what officials describe as a rushed and opaque clemency process that unfolded inside the White House during Biden’s final days in office.
The upcoming moves would represent the third round of such transfers since President Trump began his second term. Officials expect the transfers to occur within the next several weeks. Last year, ten former death-row inmates whose sentences were commuted to life without parole were sent to ADX pursuant to an executive order Trump signed on his first day back in office. That order authorized the attorney general to “take all lawful and appropriate action to ensure” that the 37 inmates whose death sentences were commuted by Biden are “imprisoned in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose.”
Biden signed off on the commutations of 37 out of 40 eligible federal death-row inmates during a December 11, 2024, meeting with senior White House officials. That information was detailed in a December 21 email from Senior Adviser to the Chief of Staff Rosa Po to Staff Secretary Stefanie Feldman and other top aides.
National Review reports that after the forthcoming transfers are completed, any remaining former death-row inmates will stay at their current institutions because they “either have not fully exhausted their administrative challenges, have been transferred to another state for prosecution, or require unique medical care,” according to a person familiar with the situation.
Bondi’s approval follows revelations from leaked documents and internal emails last fall that exposed significant confusion within the Justice Department about how clemency cases were reviewed, approved, and explained publicly in the closing days of Biden’s presidency.
While DOJ officials declined to identify specific prisoners slated for transfer, citing security concerns, a substantial number of inmates remain eligible. National Review adds that among them is Richard Allen Jackson, who admitted in 1994 to murdering Karren Styles, a recent college graduate. Jackson raped Styles, duct-taped her to a tree in the Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina, and fatally shot her in the head. Despite her pleas for mercy, Jackson killed her after masturbating to a pornographic magazine while she was restrained. He also used a stun gun on her at least ten times.
Another inmate who could be transferred is Jorge Avila Torrez, who committed a series of violent crimes in Northern Virginia. In 2010, Torrez robbed, abducted, and assaulted multiple women at gunpoint, raping one victim and robbing another. While awaiting trial, Arlington County authorities began recording his jailhouse conversations after learning he had expressed a desire to kill victim-witnesses. In those recordings, Torrez confessed to strangling 20-year-old enlisted sailor Amanda Jean Snell to death in 2009. Investigators later found his semen on her bedsheet, and her death was reclassified as a homicide.
“Among those being transferred include violent gang members, serial rapists, cold-blooded murderers, and cop killers who took the lives of countless innocent victims and shattered families forever,” Bondi said in a statement to National Review. “These monsters will now be housed with the most dangerous criminals and terrorists our country has ever seen — they will never see the light of day again.”
In April of last year, twenty-one federal inmates whose death sentences were commuted filed a lawsuit against the federal government challenging a prior ADX transfer announcement. The plaintiffs argue that prison officials had already concluded they did not require confinement in a supermax facility. Their attorneys contend the transfers amount to cruel and unusual punishment and violate constitutional guarantees of equal protection and procedural due process.
“By categorically condemning Plaintiffs to indefinite incarceration in harsh conditions in response to their receipt of clemency from the previous President, it exceeds the statutory authority granted to the Attorney General and her deputy, and is arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion; it was made without proper notice and comment; and otherwise is not in accordance with law,” the lawsuit states.
Documents also show that Justice Department pardon attorney Elizabeth Oyer appeared unaware that Biden had already verbally approved the commutations when she sent a memo on December 17 — six days after the White House meeting — to the White House Counsel’s Office and the Office of the Deputy Attorney General. The memo outlined her office’s efforts to contact victims’ families to gauge their views on commutation.
“There are 40 individuals on federal death row. Our office has received applications seeking commutation of sentence in 28 of those cases,” Oyer wrote. “In each instance, we have endeavored to solicit the views of the victims regarding the prospect of commuting the applicant’s death sentence.”
Oyer’s memo indicated that many victims either opposed clemency or were never consulted by the administration.
“Out of the total of 40 cases, we have the victims’ views in 22 cases. Those views break down as follows,” Oyer wrote. “In four cases, the victims support commutation. In seven cases, the victims have varying views, with some supporting and some opposing commutation; In 11 cases, the victims oppose commutation.” In the remaining 18 cases, officials were unable to reach victims’ families at all.