Pam Bondi sends Biden-commuted death row inmates to ADX Supermax prison

FLORENCE, COLORADO: Two former federal death row inmates, including a corrupt New Orleans police officer and a man convicted of a multi-state killing spree, have been transferred to the high-security US Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) in Florence, Colorado.

The move is part of an effort by the Justice Department, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, to revisit what confinement conditions are appropriate for inmates who had their death sentences commuted by the previous administration shortly before leaving office, per Fox News.

New faces of ADX are Aquilia Barnette and Len Davis

Like the eight inmates previously transferred, the two recently moved to ADX were convicted of particularly heinous crimes.

One of the new inmates identified was Aquilia Marcivicci Barnette, who had been convicted of chasing his ex-girlfriend from Roanoke, Virginia, to Charlotte, North Carolina, where he cut her phone lines and set her apartment building on fire. 

Though she survived with severe burns by escaping a second-story window, he tracked her back to Virginia two months later and gunned her down on the streets near her mother's home.

The second inmate, identified as Len Davis, is a former New Orleans police officer, known as "Robocop" for his aggressive style; he was caught on an FBI tape ordering and orchestrating the killing of a mother of three.

The victim had filed a brutality complaint against him secretly after witnessing his behavior.

The officer was also a chief conspirator in a "protection racket" guarding an illegal warehouse with local dealers and was found to have falsely testified in two murder cases, resulting in the exoneration of four men, including three teenagers wrongfully convicted of murder 28 years earlier.

The ADX facility itself is known to host some of the country's most notorious criminals, including Ramzi Yousef, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Joaquín Guzmán, and Mamdouh Mahmud Salim.

All 37 commuted inmates headed to ADX by early next year

The Department of Justice officially confirmed that the two former death row inmates arrived at ADX on Thursday, in addition to eight others who have been transferred to the facility since mid-September.

These are among the 37 death row inmates whose sentences were commuted by former President Biden last December in a move widely criticized as a politically motivated and improperly vetted "Hail Mary."

The DOJ said it expects all 37 commuted inmates to be transferred into the supermax facility by "early next year."

Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Trump administration have sought to crack down on violent crime and address the perceived leniency of the Biden administration's criminal justice reforms, specifically focusing on how to punish these individuals.

Justice Department officials explained that, while the commutations cannot be completely rescinded, Bondi is working to ensure the "conditions of confinement" are "consistent with the security risks those inmates present because of their egregious crimes, criminal histories, and all other relevant considerations," as stated in a previous DOJ memo.

Bondi told Fox News: "Two more monsters who plotted and violently murdered innocent people will spend the rest of their lives in our country's most severe federal prison." 

She added, "This Department of Justice will continue to seek accountability for the families blindsided by President Biden's reckless commutations of 37 vicious predators."

Pam Bondi's renewed justice for victims' families

The commutations by the Biden administration have drawn more criticism than similar actions during former President Barack Obama's administration, whose commutations largely focused on federal inmates meeting specific criteria under his Clemency Initiative.

Shortly after she was confirmed, Attorney General Bondi issued a memo aimed at "restoring a measure of justice" to the victims' families, some of whom expressed to her in a meeting earlier this year that they were "stunned" by the eleventh-hour commutations and had not been given a heads-up by the Biden administration.

It was following this outcry that, in February, Bondi issued a memo to the Bureau of Prisons ordering an assessment on where these commuted prisoners should be detained.

The result of this effort to make the "conditions of confinement" consistent with the seriousness of the crime and security concerns these prisoners pose has led to the transfer of these former death row inmates to the most secure federal prison.