A new lawsuit launched by 21 of the 37 convicts whose death sentences were controversially commuted by President Biden at the close of his presidency accuses President Trump of violating the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment” by sending them to America’s only “supermax” prison — the notorious “ADX Florence.” 

These men, formerly condemned to die, seek to block, in federal district court at the District of Columbia, what they call their “categorical, unjustified, and unconstitutional punishment of incarceration in conditions of ‘monstrosity.’” Mr. Trump has called them “vile and sadistic” and “remorseless.” 

Mr. Biden’s commutations outraged victims’ families and advocates, especially because some of the men killed children and, in one case, an infant. Mr. Trump has made no secret of his desire to punish the inmates as severely as possible within the bounds of the law. 

The Eighth Amendment violations alleged by the inmates stem from an executive  order Mr. Trump issued on his first day in office. It contended that Mr. 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.”

The only death row inmates that Mr. Biden did not pardon were the three highest-profile men on federal death row: Robert Bowers, who murdered 11 congregants at the Tree of Life Synagogue; Dylann Roof, who slew nine people at a Bible study at Mother Emanuel AME Church; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who with his brother engineered the deadly bombing at the Boston Marathon.

Mr. Trump’s order instructs Attorney General Bondi to “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.” It also instructs her to “evaluate whether these offenders can be charged with State capital crimes” and “take all necessary and lawful action to ensure that each state that allows capital punishment has a sufficient supply of drugs needed to carry out lethal injection.”

The same day that Mr. Biden commuted the sentences of those 37 to life in prison without the possibility of parole, Mr. Trump issued a “Christmas Day message” on Truth Social that told them to “GO TO HELL!” The formerly condemned bringing this suit are all now at a “Special Confinement Unit” — the Terre Haute, Indiana, federal death row facility. They report that they are now in the process of being transferred to the Colorado facility ADX Florence, the control unit prison where extremely dangerous and violent inmates are kept isolated under tightly controlled procedures.

The plaintiffs argue that Mr. Trump and Ms. Bondi have overruled the usual transfer procedures to “engage in a new sham process that categorically predetermined that all the former death row inmates “will be incarcerated indefinitely in the most oppressive conditions in the entire federal prison system: USP Florence Administrative Maximum Facility … the only federal supermax prison.”

The plaintiffs allege a laundry list of constitutional violations, including the “bill of attainder and ex post facto clauses of Article I, Section 9; the plenary power clause of Article II, Section 2; the equal protection and procedural due process clauses of the Fifth Amendment; and the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments.” They also contend that the Department of Justice is crosswise with the Administrative Procedures Act.

The plaintiffs argue that the “solitary confinement conditions at ADX” — the supermax prison to which they are ticketed if a court does not intervene — “are so much more restrictive than conditions in its other prisons” that bespoke procedures are required to dispatch someone behind its walls. 

Most supermax inmates are men who have been so incorrigibly violent inside the prison system that they must be kept in a highly controlled environment where it’s impossible for them to harm other inmates or corrections staff. ADX Florence, though, also houses celebrity inmates. Past residents have included the Soviet spy Robert Hanssen and the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski.

Currently locked in ADX’s most secure wing are the mastermind of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Ramzi Yousef, and the Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Other ADX residents include an Oklahoma City bombing conspirator, Terry Nichols, and the Atlanta Olympics bomber, Eric Robert Rudolph. The plaintiffs in this case note that a special hearing is usually required before a prisoner will be authorized for transfer. 

The plaintiffs describe ADX as looming “in a remote, high-desert area of Colorado, and its design is intended to force people to live in near-total isolation. Inmates spend between 22 and 24 hours a day locked alone in small cells built expressly for severe sensory deprivation and to minimize any human contact.” Inmates “live, sleep, eat, bathe, and defecate in cells that measure 7 by 12 feet, smaller than a standard parking space.”

The Supreme Court has held that prisoners have the right — under the Fifth Amendment — to contest any “atypical and significant” hardship compared to the ordinary deprivations of prison life. Before those changes can be implemented, incarcerated people are owed the “opportunity to be heard at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner.”

The plaintiffs argue that “the solitary confinement inflicted at ADX is objectively painful and harmful, and constitutes the type of unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain that gives rise to an Eighth Amendment violation,” and that there is no “penological justification” for such a move. They also argue that their redirection to ADX amounts to a bill of attainder — a device from Plantagenet and Tudor England in which the king would impose a harsh punishment without trial — because it amounts to “legislative action” of a punitive nature.

The transfer of the plaintiffs is set to begin on April 21, even as the Trump administration launches its efforts to repopulate federal death row. Ms. Bondi last month announced her intention to seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, who is charged with the murder of the chief executive officer of UnitedHealthCare, Brian Thompson. The DOJ is also seeking the death penalty for an inmate at ADX, Ishmael Petty, accused of killing another inmate.