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'Alcatraz of The Rockies' Awaits if Boston Bomber Avoids Execution
Thursday, May 7, 2015 11:27 AM
By: John Blosser
If a jury allows him to live, convicted Boston bombing murderer Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 21, likely will spend the rest of his life in a lonely, living hell — the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, known as the ADX, or "supermax," prison in the foothills of the Rockies in Florence, Colorado.
Tsarnaev's attorneys Wednesday tried to convince jurors debating whether to put him to death that for a youthful killer, life in prison at the ADX would be sufficient punishment for his crimes, the Boston Globe reported.
In the ADX, prisoners spend 23 hours each day in solitary confinement in cells measuring just 12 feet by 7 feet, with a four-inch-wide window, thick walls, sliding metal double doors and virtually no contact with other humans, NBC News reports.
Former warden Mark Bezy has called it "the most restrictive penitentiary in the federal system," and it often is referred to as the "Alcatraz of the Rockies," The New York Times reports.
Inmates are allowed just two 15-minute phone calls with only immediate family members each month, no media access and their mail is screened.
Some of the prisoners with whom Tsarnaev would be housed are the very worst of the nation's prison system, including the "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski, Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph, 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef, Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols, former FBI agent and Russian spy Robert Hanssen, "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, serial killer doctor Michael Swango, "underwear bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and former Bonanno family mob boss Vincent Basciano, the Times said.
The prison houses "a very small subset of the inmate population who show absolutely no concern for human life," former Federal Bureau of Prisons Director Norman Carlson told the Times.
Cells at the prison have their own sinks, toilets and showers, and meals are served in cells through a slot in the door, eliminating times inmates would be out of their cells in other prisons, the Times reported. There is a TV/radio in cells, and concrete slab beds with thin mattresses.
Former Warden Robert Hood, who described ADX as a "clean version of hell," told the Times: "This place is not designed for humanity. When it's 23 hours a day in a room with a slit of a window where you can't even see the Rocky Mountains, let's be candid here. It's not designed for rehabilitation. Period. End of story."
In a 2014 report entitled "Entombed: Isolation in the U.S. Federal Prison System," Amnesty International said it "believes that the conditions at ADX are unacceptably harsh" with "conditions of severe isolation."
Tsarnaev has been convicted of 30 charges in connection with the 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon, 17 of which carry the possibility of the death penalty his attorneys are trying to avoid, the Globe reported.
Prosecutors, however, have argued that if Tsarnaev is given a life sentence without parole, there is no guarantee that he will serve that sentence in the ADX, and he could be transferred to a lower security, less harsh prison over time.
