Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

AUSTIN -- Taxpayers could be on the hook for nearly $900,000 in damages and attorney fees after a jury found that a black state trooper who served on the elite detail that protects Gov. Rick Perry was subjected to racial discrimination and retaliation, including demotion and a pay cut.

A state district judge is expected to finalize the jury's award to Sgt. Thomas Lee Williams of the Texas Department of Public Safety after lawyers from both sides submit the last of their routine paperwork to the court Monday.

The Texas attorney general's office is expected to appeal the decision, and the DPS has denied the accusations.

Williams, a 12-year DPS veteran, brought the lawsuit after being disciplined and reassigned from the governor's protective detail, ostensibly for lodging formal complaints of discrimination concerning minority troopers in the detail. He also reported what he said was sexual harassment by a male trooper against a female trooper, both of whom were assigned to protect the governor and his family.

"I mainly filed this lawsuit because I felt that I'd been harmed," Williams said after a hearing in state District Judge Stephen Yelenosky's court in Travis County. "I knew I'd been harmed. When I brought this up to my agency, I felt they didn't do the right thing."

The jury awarded Williams nearly $520,000 in lost wages plus $100,000 for mental suffering. His attorneys are due more than $260,000 for their work preparing for a two-week trial that ended last month and received little public attention.

The governor's wife, Anita Perry, gave testimony by videotape saying that she and Williams had had a brief conversation about why the trooper was not serving in other protective details as often as some of his colleagues.

Philip Durst, whose firm represented Williams, said the trooper's supervisors had used the conversation as the part of the basis for giving Williams unfavorable evaluations after compiling an otherwise unblemished record with DPS. He was one of only two African-Americans on the 20-member detail, which included only one female trooper at the time.

"Thomas had a spotless record after years and years at DPS," Durst said. "He complained about some sexual harassment that was going on. ... He complained about why there weren't more minorities and women on the governor's protective detail, and then the write-up machine goes into overtime. He was written up 20 times over the next couple of months, and then removed."

Williams said his lawsuit against DPS should not be considered a complaint against Perry or the governor's family.

Assistant Attorney General Shelley Dahlberg, who represented DPS, said the state would probably appeal the jury's award. She also objected to the amount of fees requested by the lawyers, suggesting that they should be reviewed by a third party. But Yelenosky shut her down, saying there's nothing in the law to suggest such a review.

Williams joined the governor's protective detail in April 2002 and served until 2004 when he was reassigned to the department's narcotics division, where he now works as an undercover officer. He said the move cut his earnings and undercut his career path.

"It's considered a very prestigious position," he said. "The only other position that I would equate it to is being a [Texas] Ranger. ... Not only do we protect the governor, we protect other dignitaries from out of the country, national leaders, [and] we get to meet the president quite often."