The Department of Justice is planning a supermax prison transfer for federal inmates whose death-row sentences were commuted by former President Joe Biden in the final days of his presidency.

Attorney General Pam Bondi tells National Review that the Bureau of Prisons will transfer "most of the remaining inmates who had death sentences commuted by Biden" to the U.S. Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility, or "ADX," a high-security federal prison for male inmates in Fremont County, Colo.

This will mark the third such transfer of former death-row inmates during President Trump's second term and is expected to take place sometime over the next few weeks. Ten former death-row inmates whose sentences Biden commuted to life without parole were transferred last year in accordance with an executive order Trump signed on his first day in office. The order granted the attorney general the authority to "take all lawful and appropriate action to ensure" that the 37 inmates whose death sentences Biden commuted are "imprisoned in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose."

Following this upcoming transfer, the former death-row inmates who will remain in their current facilities "either have not fully exhausted their administrative challenges, have been transferred to another state for prosecution, or require unique medical care," a person familiar with the matter said.

Bondi's latest transfer approval comes after a series of documents and emails leaked last fall revealed the widespread confusion within the Justice Department surrounding how senior officials were vetting, approving, and characterizing clemency cases to the public in the final days of Biden's presidency.

While the Justice Department declined to name which prisoners will be transferred for security reasons, there is a long list of inmates who are eligible.

That list of prospective transferees includes violent criminals such as Richard Allen Jackson, who confessed in 1994 to the murder of Karren Styles, a recent college graduate he raped and fatally shot in the head after duct taping her to a tree in the Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina. Despite her screams and pleas for mercy, Jackson killed Styles after masturbating to a pornographic magazine while she was restrained. He also shot her at least ten times with a stun gun.

Another prospective transfer is Jorge Avila Torrez, who robbed, abducted and murdered multiple women in Northern Virginia. In 2010, Torrez abducted multiple women at gunpoint on multiple occasions, raping one of them and robbing another. Arlington County law enforcement began recording his conversations once they learned that he had told fellow inmates of his desire to kill victim-witnesses for those alleged crimes while he was awaiting trial. During those subsequently recorded conversations, Torrez admitted to strangling 20-year-old enlisted sailor Amanda Jean Snell to death in 2009, prompting authorities to reexamine evidence in her case. Examiners found Torrez's semen in her bed sheet and ruled her case 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.”

Twenty-one federal inmates whose death sentences were commuted by Biden sued the federal government last April over an ADX transfer announcement last year, arguing that prison officials had already determined that the inmates in question did not need to be detained in supermax facilities. The inmates' lawyers argue that the transfers constitute cruel and unusual punishment, violate the defendants' rights to 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 reads.

The administration's transfers are intended to highlight the chaotic, disjointed, and insular clemency process that roiled the White House in the final days of Biden's presidency.

Biden approved the commutations of 37 of 40 eligible federal death row inmates during a December 11, 2024, meeting with senior White House officials, according to an email sent by Senior Adviser to the Chief of Staff Rosa Po to Staff Secretary Stefanie Feldman and other senior aides on December 21.

Apparently unaware that Biden had already verbally approved the commutations, Justice Department pardon attorney Elizabeth Oyer sent a memo to the White House Counsel's Office and Office of the Deputy Attorney General on December 17 — six days after the aforementioned White House meeting — informing members of Biden's clemency team about her department's attempts to get in touch with death row inmates' victims' families to get a sense of how they'd feel about commutations.

"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 her December 17 memo, sent after Biden's decision had already been made. "In each instance, we have endeavored to solicit the views of the victims regarding the prospect of commuting the applicant's death sentence."

The memo revealed that many victims either didn't want to see the president grant leniency to the offender in their case or weren't ever formally in contact with the administration about the matter at all.

"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," she wrote. "In seven cases, the victims have varying views, with some supporting and some opposing commutation; In 11 cases, the victims oppose commutation." In 18 other cases, Justice Department officials were unsuccessful in getting to get in touch with victims' families.