Bondi transfers former death row inmates to Supermax prison, thanks to Biden’s clemency

FIRST ON FOX — Two federal inmates previously sentenced to death, one a crooked New Orleans police officer and the other the man behind a multistate mass shooting, have been transferred to a notorious “supermax” prison in Colorado, the Justice Department told Fox News Digital.

News of their transfers comes as U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi seeks to crack down on the previous administration’s sweeping pardon measures, particularly those against violent crimes.

The former death row inmates were transferred Thursday to the U.S. Administrative Correctional Institution in Florence, Colorado, also known as “ADX,” Justice Department officials confirmed.

They are among 37 death row inmates whose sentences Biden commuted shortly before leaving office last December. The news sparked criticism and complaints that the record pardon and commutation measures were taken as part of a political “Hail Mary” and without proper review.

Eight death row inmates have already been transferred to ADX, the Justice Department told Fox News Digital, bringing to 10 the number of death row inmates transferred to the facility since mid-September.

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President Donald Trump walks with U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi during a visit to the Department of Justice March 14, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

More are expected soon, as the 37 death row inmates transferred by Biden are expected to be transferred to the facility “early next year,” the Justice Department told Fox News Digital.

This effort comes as Bondi and the Trump administration have sought to reverse some of the Biden administration’s criminal justice reform efforts, with an emphasis on cracking down on violent crime.

Although the sentence commutations cannot be reversed entirely, Justice Department officials told Fox News Digital, Bondi has prioritized ways to penalize these individuals, in coordination with Trump’s directives, and ensure that “conditions of detention” are “consistent with the security risks these detainees pose due to their egregious crimes, criminal history, and any other relevant considerations,” according to an earlier DOJ memo.

“Two more monsters who plotted and violently murdered innocent people will spend the rest of their lives in our nation’s toughest federal prison,” Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News Digital in a statement.

“This Department of Justice will continue to hold accountable the families blindsided by President Biden’s reckless commutations of 37 vicious predators,” she added.

Like the eight former death row inmates sent to Colorado’s supermax prison, the two criminals tried Thursday by the ADX were convicted of particularly heinous crimes.

An individual chased his ex-girlfriend from Roanoke, Virginia, to Charlotte, North Carolina, where he cut the phone lines to the apartment she lived in before using gasoline cans to set the building on fire.

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The ADX Supermax prison is seen in Florence, Colorado. (Robert Daemmrich Photography Inc/Sygma via Getty Images)

Although she escaped through a second-story window and was hospitalized with second- and third-degree burns, he followed her to her family’s home in Virginia two months later, where he shot her to death on the streets of her neighborhood and just steps from her mother.

Another inmate, a former New Orleans police officer nicknamed “Robocop” for his imposing physique and aggressive law enforcement style, was filmed by the FBI ordering and orchestrating the murder of a mother of three who had come to the precinct hours earlier to file a supposedly confidential brutality complaint about his behavior she had witnessed on her way home the night before.

The FBI came across the conversation as part of a broader investigation it launched to investigate a so-called “protection racket” between cocaine traffickers in New Orleans and the city’s police, who guarded a warehouse stocked with the drug. The same officer later revealed himself as one of the main conspirators in the protection racket.

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Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared before a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

He was also found to have testified falsely in two murder cases, including one murder he has since been linked to. These statements were used to exonerate four men from prison, including three teenagers who had been wrongly convicted of murder 28 years earlier.

ADX is the only true “supermax” federal prison in the United States, and its inmates are as notorious as the prison’s reputation.

They include Ramzi Yousef, convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers; former Sinola cartel leader Joaquín Guzmán, or “El Chapo”; and Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, the co-founder of Al-Qaeda.

Shortly after his confirmation as attorney general, Bondi issued a memo aimed at “restoring some justice” for the victims’ families.

Biden’s measures drew more criticism than former President Barack Obama: As Fox News reported at the time, the vast majority of Obama’s pardon measures focused on commuting the sentences of federal inmates who met certain criteria outlined under his administration’s Pardon Initiative.

Bondi hosted victims’ families earlier this year to hear their concerns about the commutations, the DOJ said. Some said they were stunned by the last-minute switches and were not warned by the Biden administration.

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In February, Bondi issued a memo to the Bureau of Prisons ordering an assessment of the whereabouts of these prisoners.