Opinion ID: 2975396
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: CO Anthony Weeda

Text: First, the court considered the example of CO Anthony Weeda, a white officer who, in October 1999, may have used unnecessary force in pushing a handcuffed inmate to the floor. The only discipline he received was a written reprimand. JA 247. Weeda had handcuffed inmate Frazier -8- No. 06-3900 Walker v. Ohio Dep’t of Rehabilitation and Correction after Frazier had, using curse words, twice refused Weeda’s direct orders to leave the area. Use of Force Committee Report, JA 248. Weeda claimed that Frazier slipped and fell on a wet floor while he escorted him away. Id. An inmate witness reported seeing Weeda deliberately push the inmate against the wall and throw him to the floor. Id. The resulting investigation of the incident determined that Weeda’s version was not credible. Id., JA 249-50. Warden Gary R. Croft reprimanded Weeda not for excessive force or physical abuse of an inmate, but for using poor judgment by taking inmate Frazier into an isolated area. JA 247. The district court determined that Weeda had not been shown to be similarly situated for two reasons: he was under the direction of a different supervisor; and he was subject to disciplinary standards different from the one under which Walker was disciplined, which went into effect two years after the Weeda incident. Opinion pp. 5-6, JA 17-18. Citing the very case now relied on by Walker, Seay, 339 F.3d at 479, the court acknowledged that although “similarly situated employees,” to be comparable, ordinarily must have dealt with the same supervisor, this is not an inflexible requirement. The district court went on to correctly determine, however, that in circumstances such as these, where the court is asked to compare impositions of discretionary discipline in response to fact-specific abuses of authority, the identity of the supervisor is surely a relevant consideration. Here, the importance of the “different supervisor” factor is magnified where discipline was imposed for what nominally was a much less serious violation (i.e., poor judgment), under different disciplinary standards, for alleged abusive conduct that, even if believed, was of a significantly less serious nature than that perpetrated by Walker, and that was witnessed only be inmates whose credibility was suspect. -9- No. 06-3900 Walker v. Ohio Dep’t of Rehabilitation and Correction It is Walker’s burden to prove that Weeda’s employment situation was in relevant respects “nearly identical” to his own. Id. at 479. The district court did not err in concluding that Walker failed to present even a genuine issue of fact as to whether Weeda was similarly situated. There are simply too many differences between the two situations to warrant a reasonable inference that the difference in discipline each received is attributable to race discrimination.