Condemned Boston Marathon Bomber May Spend Years in Grim Prison During Appeal

Convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was sentenced to death last May 15, will likely spend years if not decades in solitary confinement under grim high-security prison condition before his sentence is carried out as his lawyers exhaust all legal means to save his life.

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons said it has not decided yet where to put Tsarnaev, according to a Reuters report. The convicted bomber faces jail time in one of two high-security facilities: ADX in Colorado or Terre Haute in Indiana, according to U.S. District Attorney for Massachusetts Carmen Ortiz.

The judge in the case will hold a hearing to formally pronounce Tsarnaev's death sentence handed down last Friday by a jury. Tsarnaev will then be placed under the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

ADX, formerly known as the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility and known as the "Alcatraz of the Rockies," is considered as "the most punitive, rigid, prison in America," according to defense lawyer Judith Clarke during the trial.

The Colorado facility is the highest security prison for prisoners not sentenced to death while the Terre Haute is "the most maximum security of maximum security," according to Robert Dunham of the Death Penalty Information Center.

The Center said Tsarnaev will be one of the 59 prisoners condemned to execution in U.S. federal courts.

Dunham told Reuters that Tsarnaev's execution is not guaranteed as it will take at least 10 years for his lawyers to exhaust appeals. A court could even overturn his death sentence.

"Because there is a death verdict, there will be a thorough appeals process. If he had gotten a life sentence, this would be over with," Dunham said.

Although ADX is located in the foothills of Colorado's Rocky Mountains, inmates there never get to see the majestic peaks nearby, getting only occasional glimpses of the sky during their brief outdoor exercise periods, sources said.

ADX currently shelters 416 male inmates, including some of the most infamous convicts in the U.S. like Oklahoma City bomber accomplice Terry Nichols, underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.

Tsarnaev would seldom see any of these characters since high-security inmates spend an average of about 23 hours a day locked up alone in their cells, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

The prisoners are served meals passed through slots in the metal doors. They can watch television and write letters.

Each cell, under 24-hour surveillance, has a concrete bed, a table, a toilet, and a very small window. A 10-foot by 20-foot outdoor enclosure slightly extends their space, but just for about an hour and a half each day, according to testimony by Mark Bezy, a former federal prison warden.

"They sit in their cells, locked in their cells every day," Bezy said. Prisoners resort to communicating with each other through the pipes that link their toilets, he added.

No one has ever escaped from ADX, officials said.

ADX, founded in 1994, has been the subject of multiple lawsuits contending that sentences there violate constitutional protections against "cruel and unusual punishment."

The high-security prison in Terre Haute in Indiana is just as forbidding. The facility houses the death chamber where all three prisoners executed by the federal government since 1988 have died by lethal injection, including Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

As in ADX, federal inmates at Terre Haute's death row spend about 23 hours each day alone in small cells with a bed, a toilet, and a wash station. Tsarnaev would live essentially in solitary confinement while his lawyers attempt to save him from death, Dunham said.

"Death row is supermax," said Dunham. "It's extremely, highly restricted."

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the death penalty is a "fitting punishment" for Tsarnaev.

"Dzhokhar Tsarnaev coldly and callously perpetrated a terrorist attack that injured hundreds of Americans and ultimately took the lives of three individuals: Krystle Marie Campbell, a 29-year-old native of Medford; Lingzi Lu, a 23-year-old Boston University graduate student from China; and Martin Richard, an 8-year-old boy from Dorchester who was watching the marathon with his family just a few feet from the second bomb," she said. "In the aftermath of the attack, Tsarnaev and his brother murdered Sean Collier, a 27-year-old patrol officer on the MIT campus, extinguishing a life dedicated to family and service."