Panel supports Metro on suicide

Keith Paul

Friday, March 2, 2001 | 11:10 a.m.

The Citizen Review Board agreed with a Metro Police investigation that an inmate at the Clark County jail hanged himself in December contrary to the family's allegations that guards caused the man's death.

A review board screening panel "concluded Antonio Addison's death was a suicide and there was no misconduct by corrections officers," said Andrea Beckman, the board's executive director.

The decision was made Wednesday, but not released until this morning per the board's policy of not releasing findings for 48 hours.

The screening panel, which looks at complaints and decides if they go to another panel for a hearing, also decided a complaint against a Metro Police officer will go a hearing panel, Beckman said.

She would not release the allegations until after the hearing panel reviewed the case.

"The mere decision to send the case for a hearing does not imply or infer any problems with (Metro's internal investigation), but simply they had enough issues that they decided further review was necessary," Beckman said.

In the board's first two decisions released last month, the board concluded that in both cases the internal investigations were lacking. Both of those cases have been reopened by Metro internal affairs.

The screening panel Wednesday also reviewed a complaint against a corrections officer and decided there was no misconduct and concurred with the internal investigation that exonerated the guard. A fourth case was not considered since it occurred more than a year ago. The statute that created the board states the group cannot consider complaints if the incident took place more than a year before the complain was filed.

In the Addison case, police said the 20-year-old man was found hanging from a bed sheet on Dec. 2. He was taken to University Medical Center, where he died Dec. 6.

A guard found Addison hanging from the sheet about 15 minutes after Addison had made a phone call. Addison was being held in a one-person cell away from the general population because of discipline problems, jail official said.

Elnora Addison, Antonio Addison's mother, held a candlelight vigil after her son died and demanded answers from the jail about her son's death. Addison's family said he never mentioned anything about suicide and said he complained during a phone call to a former girlfriend that guards had roughed him up.

Phone calls from the jail are recorded, and police said they listened to the call after finding Addison hanging from the sheet. Officials said he expressed to the former girlfriend he was going to commit suicide and never said anything about guards abusing him.

The review board screening panel listened to a copy of the tape conversation before ruling they agreed with Metro's conclusions.