ST. LOUIS • Sheriff's deputy William "Pat" Hill gasped for breath when he saw a hangman's noose dangling from pipes near a prisoner holding area at the St. Louis Civil Courts Building, a co-worker testified Wednesday.

Deputy Neil Riley, the witness, said he also was shaken to see what he considered a symbol of race-motivated lynching.

"This noose meant hate," Riley said in the first day of testimony in a workplace discrimination lawsuit against St. Louis Sheriff James Murphy. "I was just blown away that this could be hanging in the Civil Courts Building in the year 2006."

Riley said Hill even photographed the rope, but the department did not react. "I just knew nothing was going to happen about it," Riley told the jury.

The following year, Hill and another deputy, Jacques Hughes, filed the suit, claiming Murphy supported a racially hostile work environment and failed to discipline three employees who hung the noose.

Hill, 57, and Hughes, 51, also allege that Murphy repeatedly passed over black deputies in favor of less-experienced whites for promotions, pay increases and job assignments. Hill still works for the department; Hughes was fired in April 2008, officials said. Both are African-American; Murphy is white.

The suit seeks damages in excess of $25,000 and a court order forcing the department to change its ways.

Sheriff's officials deny the claims. They say blacks make up about 40 percent of the department and work in every assignment, even filling two of the three captain positions.

Murphy's attorney, Michael Hughes, said the employees responsible for the noose had tried to suspend a white deputy's chair from the ceiling as a practical joke. Hughes said the sheriff did not believe it was racially motivated and did put letters in their personnel files.

Jerome Dobson, the lawyer for the deputies, told jurors the noose was intended to intimidate black prisoners escorted through the area that day.

Officials, including Murphy, failed to respond to the incident or long-standing racial problems that dated to his election in 1988, Dobson said. Murphy's three top aides are white, the lawyer noted.

He claimed white deputies were given the best assignments while blacks were treated like 'second-class citizens." The morning roll call became segregated, with white employees sitting in the best seats, he said, and promotions were awarded arbitrarily, and disproportionately to whites.

Dobson also claimed that Murphy retaliated after Hill and Jacques Hughes filed the suit. Jacques Hughes was suspended for missing two days of work to attend depositions in the case even though he provided notice and had ample vacation time to use, the lawyer said.

He said Jacques Hughes was fired for violating a residency rule, the first to be penalized under that policy in 18 years even though Murphy knew that others also lived outside the city.

Six months after the case was filed, Hill was suspended for allegedly sleeping on the job. He was in a locked court building working the overnight shift. Several white deputies were later caught sleeping while guarding a prisoner at a hospital, Dobson said, yet were not disciplined.

Michael Hughes insisted there had been no retaliation. He said both deputies were disciplined after a complaint was filed or a violation was brought to Murphy's attention.

The trial is expected to last about two weeks. Circuit Judge Troy A. Cardona, a visiting judge from Jefferson County, is presiding.