If Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is spared the death penalty, he will likely spend the rest of his life at the most restrictive prison in America, a place so isolating that it has been called a clean version of hell.
The United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility — aka ADX, or "supermax" — is where the federal government sends its worst criminals, from terrorists to traitors. At this point, it is the best Tsarnaev can hope for. But as they wrap up their case against the death penalty, Tsarnaev's lawyers are trying to persuade the jury that if they sent him to the ADX, he'd be separated from the world forever.
This week, the defense team called a retired U.S. Bureau of Prisons warden to describe the extreme isolation that Tsarnaev would face at the 490-cell prison in the barren foothills of Colorado's Rocky Mountains.
The former warden, Mark Bezy, described the ADX as "the most restrictive penitentiary in the federal system," and said Tsarnaev would likely be placed in a unit reserved for terrorists whose contact with other people is severely limited. His testimony was expected to continue Thursday.
Even in general population, the ADX imposes extreme isolation. Prisoners spend about 23 hours a day in solitary confinement in 12-by-7-foot cells with a single 4-inch-wide window and walls thick enough to stifle any attempts at communication. A slot in the door is used to deliver meals and for any visits.
Amnesty International last year
said the facility breached international standards for the humane treatment of prisoners.
"It breaks down the human spirit, it breaks down the human psyche. It breaks your mind," former supermax inmate Garrett Linderman
told CBS' 60 Minutes in 2009.
Thirty-three convicted terrorists have been send to ADX, Bezy said, and since 2002 they have been placed in a special section called "H unit" where they live under even tighter restrictions: no contact with the media or other inmates and personal visits and phone calls only with immediate family, for example. Only the U.S. Attorney General can impose or remove those restrictions, Bezy said.
Tsarnaev has already under such "special administrative measures," Bezy said.
Under questioning from a prosecutor, Bezy acknowledged that it's possible to be taken off the unit, and nine terrorism inmates have done just that in the past five years.
It's also possible to win more privileges, like more than one 15-minute phone call a month, while on the H unit, Bezy said.
If the jury sentences Tsarnaev to life in prison, he will join a rogue's gallery of convicted terrorists, along with gang leaders, mobsters and serial killers.