No verdict on Day 1 of deliberations in Darryl Moss trial, former aide suing Springfield mayor

SPRINGFIELD — Jurors in a civil trial heard closing arguments Tuesday after more than a week of testimony related to a former mayoral aide who argues his 2020 firing was racially motivated.

Jurors did not reach a verdict on their first day of deliberations.

Darryl Moss sued the city and Mayor Domenic J. Sarno in 2022 after being fired over what officials considered an inflammatory social media post during a combustible time in the country.

"Yo, Keshawn Dodds ... grab the rifles," a Facebook post by Moss read during the peak of the Black Lives Matter movement, when protests were going on around the country. Central to those protests was the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, murdered by white police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in May 2020.

Moss has argued his post was not a call for violence, but a reference to the HBO series "Lovecraft Country," based on a young Black man's trek across the segregated south in the 1950s.

One scene featured a group of white men burning a cross outside a home where Black people were hosting a party, and that prompted a similar quote. Moss' attorney, Robert Johnson, told the jury the human resources director couldn't be bothered to watch the show, as he didn't have an HBO subscription.

"The director did not do a thorough investigation ... and violated its own policies," Johnson argued.

The premise of Moss' lawsuit is that his firing was driven by racial animus after he began speaking out against the city's handling of an investigation and personnel decisions regarding the Nathan Bill's case, in which white officers beat four Black patrons outside the bar in 2015.

Moss pushed the mayor on that issue and took the police to task, defending a Black man who had a license to carry weapons revoked — and also over social media posts.

"Once he crossed the police, things began to change for Mr. Moss," his lawyer told the panel.

Sarno himself testified for more than two days during the trial.

While his initial complaint filed in Hampden Superior Court sought $2 million in damages, plus attorneys' fees, Johnson asked the jury to award Moss upwards of $5 million. That figure would include back pay, future pay, compensation for emotional distress and punitive damages.

He must convince jurors his firing was retaliatory and that others in similar situations were treated differently for the same type of infraction. One example was Sarno's former chief of staff, Thomas Ashe, later appointed as the head of the city's Parks Department.

Ashe was chastised by the Office of Campaign and Political Finance for sharing a post about a Sarno political fundraiser. Public employees are not permitted to fundraise in any way.

Ashe was allowed to take the posts down and the state campaign watchdogs dropped the matter. Johnson said Ashe faced no discipline, but lawyers for the city said the two examples are not the same.

An attorney for the city argued Moss was fired for violating the social media policy established by the mayor. And as the former deputy communications director, Moss' name was at the top of a press release announcing the policy, defense lawyer Patricia Rapinchuk told jurors.

She also disputed that Moss was fired over racial tensions.

"Did Mayor Sarno terminate Mr. Moss because he was Black? That evidence does not add up to racial animus against Mr. Moss," she argued.

Rapinchuk added that Moss' post was, in fact, a call to arms.

"It sounds like a call to vigilante action," she said.

Jurors will continue deliberations Wednesday morning. Their final question to Judge Jeremy Bucci on Tuesday had to do with the calculation of damages.

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