An unsolicited admission by a nine-year veteran of the Kane County, Ill., Corrections Department that he had lied in the past--and had lied again recently--about using illegal drugs led to his firing last week by a sheriff's disciplinary panel.

Thomas Simmons, 42, said in last Wednesday's hearing that he had felt anxiety at being wrongly implicated in an internal investigation into alleged cocaine use and other misconduct by Kane correctional officers, so he made a confession.

Simmons said in the hearing that on May 19, he told a sheriff's investigator he had smoked some marijuana as a teenager, something he said he lied about when questioned a day earlier, and which he had lied about nine years ago on his job application.

Simmons also told Deputy Sheriff David Wagner that he had taken a few puffs of a marijuana cigarette last New Year's Eve, an investigator said.

But at the hearing, Simmons denied ever having told Wagner that what he smoked on New Year's Eve was marijuana, contending that he did not know what type of cigarette it was.

Simmons passed two drug tests in connection with the investigation of alleged misconduct, drug use and thefts by officers and has not been charged with any misconduct related to the investigation.

But his admissions that he had lied--and that he had taken a pair of orange inmate trousers from the jail last year--led Sheriff Ken Ramsey to suspend him in June and call for his firing.

The Sheriff's Merit Commission followed Ramsey's recommendation after a three-hour hearing Wednesday.

Simmons was fired on the spot after the three-member commission found him guilty of having used marijuana, lying both to an investigator and on his job application, and removing jail property.

In testimony Wednesday, a contrite Simmons admitted his guilt and acknowledged that some type of discipline, short of dismissal, was expected.

Attorney Timothy O'Neil, who represented the sheriff's office, told the commission it had little choice but to fire Simmons because of his lying.