In the United States, a federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from transferring 20 prisoners who were on Death Row but have since had their sentences commuted. The administration had been pushing to send them to the country’s most secure facility, known as a ‘Supermax’ prison. The judge ruled that the administration had been carrying out a ‘sham’ process to determine where the prisoners would end up.

Under the US Constitution, the 5th Amendment guarantees everyone the right to ‘due process’, which the judge argued had been completely brushed aside when the prisoners were moved to the Supermax prison in Colorado. The judge went so far as to suggest that the prisoners were being made an example of by the Trump administration as retaliation because their sentences had been commuted by President Biden.

As Biden’s presidency was winding down, he decided to let these 20 prisoners off the hook from execution. Rather than being put to death, they would be serving life sentences behind bars. However, shortly after Trump took office, his administration wasted no time in attempting to ship all of them off to ADX Florence – a supermax facility notorious for its brutal conditions.

Life at ADX Florence is no walk in the park. Inmates are confined to their cells for 23 hours daily with virtually no human interaction. The judge stressed that relocating someone to such extreme circumstances represents a significant deprivation of liberty that cannot simply be rushed through without following proper legal procedures.

The crux of the matter is that the Trump administration failed to give the prisoners a genuine opportunity to speak out about the transfer. They weren’t adequately notified, nor were they given a platform to push back against the decision. Due process requires that the government stick to fair procedures before stripping away someone’s freedoms or substantially worsening their living conditions.

What really raised red flags for the judge was the suspicious timing. It appeared the administration was bent on getting even with these prisoners merely because Biden had shown them clemency. Weaponizing prison conditions as payback flies in the face of constitutional protections.