Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

A Travis County jury has awarded more than $600,000 to a state trooper who filed a lawsuit charging the Department of Public Safety with retaliation and discrimination after he was transferred out of the elite protective detail that watches over Gov. Rick Perry and his family.

State District Judge Stephen Yelenosky, who oversaw the trial that ended in early March, has yet to finalize the judgment. He asked lawyers for both sides Tuesday to submit input on final details by early next week.

Sgt. Thomas Williams accused the agency of retaliating against him after he filed complaints alleging sexual harassment of a Capitol trooper and racial and sex discrimination within the agency.

On March 6, a 12-person jury unanimously sided with him, agreeing that the agency transferred Williams from the detail because he had filed a discrimination complaint and that his race was a factor; he is African American.

The jury said Williams is entitled to $619,801 in monetary damages, including $128,316 in back pay that he lost due to agency actions, $391,485 in pay he would have earned by continuing on the detail, and $100,000 in compensatory damages.

Williams said he had hoped the suit would change behaviors.

"I felt they didn't do the right thing," he said outside the courtroom. "Everyone's afraid to speak up against the department because everybody knows that they retaliate against you."

Williams added: "We all have rights, and they should afford everyone's rights equally no matter who it is voicing the complaint, especially when there is proof showing that my complaint was valid."

Williams, 38, was a member of the protective detail from 2002 until early January 2004, when he was shifted to handling narcotics cases. The Army veteran had graduated from the department's recruit school in 1996 and served stints with the DPS in Baytown and Alpine.

His lawyer, Phil Durst, said the case pivoted on two complaints that his client filed while serving on the detail. The first one charged that a colleague sexually harassed a female trooper working at the Capitol. The second said there was discrimination against black people and women joining the detail, who once aboard also didn't consistently get choice assignments including those resulting in overtime pay.

As of March, according to the DPS, white males made up 46 percent of the security detail. Hispanic males account for 41 percent of its membership, black males 8 percent and white females 5 percent. The agency has declined to say how many individuals make up the detail.

Williams said he has never thought Perry or his family were a party to discrimination within the detail. "I enjoy working for them," Williams said.

Initially, he said, he'd also hoped to return to the detail.

"But considering that the department hasn't disciplined these guys for what they've done, I mean, there's just no way I could go back" there, Williams said. He and his lawyers said the supervisor of the security detail, whose actions regarding Williams were a factor in the suit, remains in place.

Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Tela Mange said the lieutenant atop the detail has held the supervisory role for about five years.

Williams' lawyers, Durst and Craig Deats, have asked the judge to require the state to pay more than $261,000 in attorney fees covering their costs in the trial and possible appeals.

David Weiser, an Austin employment lawyer not involved in the case, said the compensatory damages fell short of the $300,000 cap set in state law.

"There have been bigger awards," Weiser said. But "every practitioner in this field would realize this is a significant victory," he said, adding that Durst and Deats "obviously put on strong evidence in front of a jury that had its ears open."

No appeal decision has been made, Mange said. Neither she nor Perry's office had further comment.

Shelley Dahlberg, an assistant attorney general representing the agency in court, told Yelenosky: "We don't know what we're appealing yet, if we're appealing at all."