In 1990, John Jay Powers was sentenced to time in prison for robbing a bank. While there, he witnessed the murder of another inmate and began suffering from post-traumatic stress. In 2001, after a brief escape attempt, he was transferred to Administrative Maximum (ADX) Florence, the federal government's only supermax facility, where inmates are housed in conditions of such extreme isolation the prison is known, not so fondly, as the "Alcatraz of the Rockies".

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