Jury rejects pilot’s discrimination suit

The five-man, three-woman jury took close to five hours to find that State Police did not discriminate or retaliate against Sergeant Jody Reilly, State Police said. A judge in US District Court in Boston removed the third claim, of sexual harassment, before the jury began deliberations.

“We were confident that the jury, when presented with the facts, would see the truth in this case,’’ State Police Superintendent Colonel Mark F. Delaney said in a statement yesterday.

John Sheck, the attorney for Reilly, had no comment on the verdict last night.

Reilly, 39, testified last week that her supervisor, Major Michael Barry, challenged her skills as a pilot after she turned down his advances while he was the commander of the Air Wing in 2003.

In 2004, Reilly sued the State Police, alleging that the agency launched an unjustified investigation into her flight qualifications and personal life, which ultimately led to an eight-month suspension from the Air Wing without pay in 2005.

Assistant Attorney General Charles Wyzanski, representing the State Police, argued in court that Reilly lied about an affair with her former supervisor, Lieutenant Michael Melia, who unfairly helped her advance to become a commercial helicopter pilot. Barry replaced Melia in March 2002, and was ordered by his superiors to investigate Reilly’s flight qualifications, according to court testimony.

The investigation and the revelation about Reilly’s lie led to her suspension and transfer from the Air Wing to the Middleborough barracks.

Reilly, who received her pilot’s license from the Federal Aviation Administration in September 2001 and now works as a sergeant in Middleborough, admitted the affair in court and said she initially lied about it when questioned by her superiors because she did not want anyone to doubt the validity of her skills as a pilot.

An FAA investigation found that Reilly’s pilot training and license were valid. Reilly testified that Barry praised her skills as a pilot before she rejected his invitations to socialize after work and that her superiors began to scrutinize her work after she filed the discrimination complaint in 2004.