Fired guard is back on job

An investigation uncovered problems with how the suicide was handled.
COLUMBUS (AP) -- The state has rehired a prison guard fired over the handling of a death row inmate's suicide in May after a mediator found no evidence the guard had done anything wrong.
James Clark, a corrections officer at Mansfield Correctional Institution, was dismissed in August for writing in a logbook that another guard, Jeffrey Whitaker, had made the required nightly rounds.
Whitaker was fired for not doing the checks. He also is appealing.
Clark's firing came after an internal investigation by the prison system found that convicted killer Martin Koliser likely was dead more than three hours before his body was found.
Prison rules call for a check of inmates' cells twice an hour.
Clark, sitting at a desk outside the death row unit that included Koliser's cell, relied on the word of a fellow guard who was supposed to make the checks, said Dwight Washington, a mediator hired by the state and the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association to handle Clark's appeal.
Ruling
"The person who was sitting at the desk relies on the range officer who actually made the physical and visual observation of the inmates," Washington said Monday. "I have to assume if you come back out of the range and indicate everything's OK, then that's what occurred."
In the case of Clark, "there were no facts to suggest he did anything differently, or anything to alert him that this inmate in his cell was in any kind of peril," Washington said.
Clark, 63, is getting his job back and will be repaid almost $9,000 in lost wages. He will also receive lost vacation, sick days and personal time, said Brian Niceswanger, a spokesman for the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
Clark has an unlisted number and could not be reached. Messages were left through the state employee union seeking comment.
Discrepencies and problems
The prison system's report concluded that Koliser committed suicide between 1:30 and 2 a.m. May 7, contradicting the report of the Richland County coroner, who concluded Koliser died at 5:30 a.m.
The prison system investigation also found numerous other problems with the handling of the suicide, including inadequate documentation of guards' activities at night, broken first aid kits and a failure to regularly carry out drills to prevent and respond to suicides.
In addition, the investigation found that the cells of Koliser and other inmates were so filthy that the view into them was blocked, indicating that officers were not requiring inmates to keep their living areas clean.
All the problems identified in the report have been fixed, Niceswanger said.
The state is moving death row from Mansfield to the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown to save money. Forty inmates remain after the move Thursday of an additional 42 prisoners.