Another former Merrimack County jail guard was acquitted by a jury Friday of assaulting an inmate. But jail officials are standing by their decision to fire Salvatore Mills and Barry Lee, another former guard acquitted last month of similar charges.

Mills, 45, of Gilmanton, and Lee, 42, of Tilton, made headlines this year when they and two other guards - Shawn Cunningham and Aaron Little - were arrested for allegedly assaulting inmates at the jail.

The arrest affidavits filed by the Merrimack County Sheriff's Office, which led the investigations, described the four as jail guards who were brutal and heavy-handed with inmates.

Cunningham, 44, of Franklin, had pushed, knocked down and grabbed the throat of an inmate, the affidavit said. Lee and Mills were accused of equally aggressive conduct toward another inmate. According to those charges, Lee sprayed an inmate with pepper spray while the inmate was handcuffed, sitting and posing no threat. Mills was charged with holding the inmate's head while Lee sprayed him and with ordering a witness not to tell anyone, the charges said.

Little, 29, of Franklin, broke an inmate's leg by grabbing and throwing him to the floor, according to the charges.

All four men were fired after jail officials conducted internal investigations. But juries have not been similarly persuaded by all the allegations.

Cunningham, the first to go to trial, was convicted in May of two counts of simple assault. Lee was acquitted last month, followed by Mills this month. Before Mills went to trial, county prosecutors dropped a witness tampering charge. Little, meanwhile, is awaiting trial.

Yesterday, Mills's attorney, James Moir of Concord, said his client should never have been charged. Testimony at trial and a videotape of the alleged assault convinced jurors that Mills was properly trying to restrain an inmate who was out of control, Moir said.

He said the witness tampering charge was dropped after it was revealed that an investigator had changed a comment from Mills in a way that made it sound criminally threatening. The complaint alleged that Mills had told a colleague to say Mills had done nothing wrong if the colleague was questioned. But Moir said a taped version of the comment showed that Mills had instead said to the colleague, "Why was I suspended? You saw I didn't do anything wrong."

"That's a big difference," Moir said.

Moir blamed an "overaggressive member of the sheriff's department" and an "ineffectual (jail) administration" for pursing flimsy charges against Mills. Moir said the inmate who was allegedly assaulted was so aggressive and threatening that it took four guards to restrain him and get him from his cell.

Attorney Paul Maggiotto of Concord, Lee's attorney, could not be reached. But after his client was acquitted in early October, Maggiotto had similar complaints about the charges. "Barry Lee used (pepper) spray, as he was trained to do, which was used to prevent other corrections officers from being harmed by a threatening, noncompliant, somewhat out-of-control inmate," he had said.

Prosecutor Wayne Coull, who dropped the witness tampering charge against Mills and prosecuted Mills and Lee on the assault charges, could not be reached yesterday afternoon.

The criticisms have not dissuaded Sheriff Scott Hilliard or jail Superintendent Ron White that the charges and subsequent firings were appropriate.

Hilliard defended his investigation yesterday and said he believes his office had evidence that both Mills and Lee abused their authority. He believes the jurors disagreed because they were not told at trial what actions proper force included. Therefore, he said, jurors had no way to compare just force with Lee and Mills's actions.

Single page