Nation roundup for October 22

Man kills three, hurts four at mall

BROOKFIELD, Wis. (AP) — A man police suspected of killing three and wounding four by opening fire at a tranquil day spa was found dead Sunday afternoon following a six-hour manhunt that locked down a shopping center, country club and hospital in suburban Milwaukee.

Authorities said they believed the shooting was related to a domestic dispute. The man they identified as the suspect, Radcliffe Franklin Haughton, 45, of Brown Deer, had a restraining order against him. Brookfield Police Chief Dan Tushaus said Haughton died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound and was found in the spa. Authorities initially believed Haughton had fled and spent much of Sunday looking for him.

The shooting happened about 11 a.m. at the Azana Day Spa, a two-story, 9,000-square-foot building across from a major shopping mall in Brookfield, a middle-to-upper class community west of Milwaukee. Hours later, a bomb squad descended on the building, and Tushaus said an improvised explosive device had been found inside. It was not clear whether it remained a threat.

Haughton’s father, Radcliffe Haughton, Sr., spoke to a television station and The Associated Press shortly before police announced his son’s death. In telephone interviews from Florida, he said he had last spoken to his son a few days ago, but didn’t have any indication anything was wrong. He begged his son to turn himself in.

After learning of his son’s death, he said, “This is very sad.”

Police released little about Haughton other than a physical description and a photo. Online court records showed a temporary restraining order was issued against him Oct. 8 in Milwaukee County Circuit Court because of a domestic abuse complaint.

Pregnant woman is fatally stabbed

NEW YORK (AP) — A pregnant mother of four killed in her New York City apartment the day before her wedding died from slash and stab wounds to her neck, authorities said Sunday.

The death of Vindalee Smith, 38, was ruled a homicide, the city medical examiner’s office said in releasing autopsy results. Her unborn child did not survive.

Smith was found on the floor of her home in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn on Saturday. Neighbors said she had moved into the area in recent weeks. Her other children are older and did not live with her.

Police said there was no sign of forced entry, and no weapon was recovered. Investigators were looking for a possible suspect and spoke to Smith’s fiance as well as friends and family.

Smith had once feuded with a former neighbor who threatened to kill her, but it was months ago and the trouble had stopped when she moved to the new apartment, the Rev. Ferron Francis told the Daily News.

On Sunday, police tape blocked off the street to keep people away from the brownstone home.

Smith was a devout Seventh-day Adventist and attended New Dimension Church, about half a block from her residence.

The brutal, unexpected death “is tragic, it has broken our hearts,” Francis said.

Smith had joined the church about three years ago, said Andrew Connor, a deacon at New Dimension.

“She was dedicated to her family,” he said. “She was beautiful and this is very surreal.”

Suit: Boy declared dead was alive

CHICAGO (AP) — The parents of an 8-year-old boy who has had severe brain damage for years have sued a Chicago hospital, alleging that doctors pronounced their son dead, keeping him off his ventilator for hours, even though relatives continued to insist that the boy’s eyes and body were still moving.

The lawsuit filed this week by Sheena Lane and Pink Dorsey on behalf of their son, Jaylen Dorsey, accuses Mercy Hospital and Medical Center of negligence in the February incident and alleges that nearly five hours passed before staff agreed to perform a cardiac ultrasound, which showed Jaylen Dorsey’s heart was beating.

“You didn’t have to be a doctor to see that the heart was pumping blood,” the boy’s father, Pink Dorsey, said at a news conference Friday.

The hospital denies the lawsuit’s allegations, and said in a written statement that Jaylen arrived at the hospital after suffering full cardiac arrest for 25 minutes and doctors treated him for “an extended period of time” before declaring him dead.

“Despite extensive resuscitative efforts, Jaylen did not immediately regain a pulse and no heart activity was noted for several hours,” the hospital said. “… While this is a very rare occurrence, extensive resuscitation efforts, medication and young age can result in a patient’s heart function returning spontaneously. We hope for continued strength for Jaylen.”

At Friday’s news conference, the couple said Jaylen has had severe brain damage since age 2 and that his disabilities have kept him bedridden and on a ventilator.

OJ freedom bid to be considered

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A Nevada judge agreed Friday to reopen the armed robbery and kidnapping case against former football star O.J. Simpson to determine if the former football star was so badly represented by his lawyers that he should be freed from prison and get another trial.

Simpson wasn’t in a Las Vegas courtroom while Clark County District Court Judge Linda Marie Bell agreed to hear evidence and consider 18 of 22 questions cited in a May appeal by Simpson appeals lawyer Patricia Palm. The judge dismissed four other grounds on which Simpson, 65, seeks release from state prison, where he is serving nine to 33 years.

The development could put Simpson on the witness stand for the first time. He stood trial in 2008 after authorities said he led five men, including two with guns, in a September 2007 confrontation with two sports memorabilia dealers and a middleman in a cramped room at a Las Vegas casino-hotel.

The judge also granted a waiver of attorney-client privilege on questions in dispute between Simpson and his trial lawyer, Yale Galanter.

A key question will be whether Galanter had personal financial and business interests that posed a conflict that should have precluded him from handling Simpson’s case.

“Galanter was motivated by his own interests, which caused him to materially limit Simpson’s legal representation,” the appeal states. “Galanter remained on the case until rehearing was denied and denied Simpson the opportunity to raise this issue.”

Galanter declined comment Friday.

Simpson trial prosecutor Chris Owens protested that Palm was rehashing issues long settled by Simpson’s conviction, which was upheld by the Nevada Supreme Court.

“She’s just second-guessing what they did,” Owens said. “It’s hindsight.”

But Palm said Simpson wants a chance to show that Galanter was in Las Vegas and knew in advance about Simpson’s plan to retrieve items from the memorabilia dealers that Simpson claimed were stolen from him after his 1995 acquittal in the Los Angeles slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman.

Galanter, a Miami lawyer who represented Simpson in other cases before the arrest in Las Vegas, denied during trial that he had anything to do with the ill-fated Las Vegas caper.

“Judge, I tell you … I wasn’t there,” Galanter said at the time. “I had nothing to do with it.”

Palm noted that Clark County District Judge Jackie Glass made no further inquiry.

The latest appeal states that Galanter was paid more than $400,000 for Simpson’s defense in the robbery-kidnapping case and another $125,000 for the June 2010 appeal before the state Supreme Court. The document says Galanter paid Gabriel Grasso, Simpson’s trial lawyer from Las Vegas, just $5,000.

Palm specifically exempts Grasso from allegations of ineffective counsel. The document cites accounts from Grasso and Simpson saying Grasso “was not made aware of the pre-incident advice, was not privy to private strategy discussions between Galanter and Simpson during trial, and was rebuked when he attempted to give advice without Galanter’s approval.”

Simpson claims Galanter advised him that the plan to confront the two memorabilia dealers was legally permissible as long as no one trespassed on private property and no physical force was used.

Simpson wanted to testify at trial, but “Galanter advised Simpson that he should not testify because the state could not prove its case,” Palm’s appeal says, “and Galanter prevented Grasso from fully advising Simpson to the contrary.”

Simpson also claims he was never advised that the Clark County district attorney offered a pretrial deal that could have gotten Simpson two to five years in prison for pleading guilty to robbery. Palm says Simpson would have taken the offer.

Grasso and Malcolm LaVergne, a Las Vegas lawyer who handled Simpson’s state Supreme Court appeal, also declined comment.

Grasso is suing Galanter in federal court in Nevada, alleging breach of contract. A lawsuit by Galanter is pending in Miami alleging he was defamed by Grasso, LaVergne and Grasso’s lawyer in the breach of contract case.

Gallup study: 3.4 percent of US adults are LGBT

NEW YORK (AP) — A new Gallup survey, touted as the largest of its kind, estimates that 3.4 percent of American adults identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

The findings, released Thursday, were based on interviews with more than 121,000 people. Gallup said it is the largest study ever aimed at calculating the nation’s LGBT population.

The report’s lead author, demographer Gary Gates of the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute, said he hoped the findings would help puncture some stereotypes about gays and lesbians while illustrating the diversity of their community.

“Contemporary media often think of LGBT people as disproportionately white, male, urban and pretty wealthy,” he said. “But this data reveal that relative to the general population, the LGBT population has a larger proportion of nonwhite people and clearly is not overly wealthy.”

According to the survey, which was conducted between June and September, 4.6 percent of African-Americans identify as LGBT, 4 percent of Hispanics, 4.3 percent of Asians and 3.2 percent of whites. Overall, a third of those identifying as LGBT are nonwhite, the report said.

There was a slight gender difference: 3.6 percent of women identified as LGBT, compared to 3.3 percent of men. And younger adults, aged 18 to 29, were more likely than their elders to identify as LGBT.

One striking difference: among 18-to-29-year-olds, 8.3 percent of women identify as LGBT, compared with 4.6 percent of men the same age.

The survey also asked about political leanings: It found that 44 percent of the LGBT adults identified as Democratic, 43 percent as independent, and 13 percent as Republican. In contrast to Gallup polling showing an overall even split between President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, the survey found 71 percent of LGBT registered voters supporting Obama and 22 percent supporting Romney.

In contrast to some previous, smaller studies, the Gallup survey found that identification as LGBT is highest among Americans with the lowest levels of education. Among those with a high school education or less, 3.5 percent identify as LGBT, compared with 2.8 percent of those with a college degree and 3.2 percent of those with postgraduate education.

A similar pattern was found regarding income groups. More than 5 percent of those with annual incomes of less than $24,000 identify as LGBT, compared to 2.8 percent of those making more than $60,000 a year.

Among those who report income, about 16 percent of LGBT individuals have incomes above $90,000 per year, compared with 21 percent of the overall adult population, the Gallup survey found. It said 35 percent of those who identify as LGBT report incomes of less than $24,000 a year, compared to 24 percent for the population in general.

Regarding family status, 20 percent of LGBT individuals said they are married, and an additional 18 percent are living with a partner; they weren’t asked about the gender of those spouses and partners. Among non-LGBT Americans, 54 percent are married and 4 percent are living with a partner, the report said.

The survey found that 32 percent of both LGBT and non-LGBT women have children under 18 in their homes. By contrast, 16 percent of LGBT men had children in their homes, compared to 31 percent of non-LGBT men.

Gates said he was struck by the geographical spread of the LGBT population, pegged at 3.7 percent in the East, 3.6 percent in the West, 3.4 percent in the Midwest and 3.2 percent in the South.

The survey was conducted by telephone June 1 through Sept. 30 and has a margin of sampling error of less than 1 percentage point.

The results were based on responses to the question, “Do you, personally, identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender?” included in 121,290 Gallup interviews.

The overall 3.4 percent figure is similar to a 3.8 percent estimate made previously by Gates after averaging a group of smaller U.S. surveys conducted from 2004 to 2008.

The survey noted that its findings did not account for LGBT people who, for whatever reason, did not want to acknowledge their sexual orientations in the interviews.