MOBILE, Ala. (AP) – A split in the Mobile family that’s synonymous with convenience store coffee in Alabama has resulted in a $2.5 million verdict against Leroy Hill Coffee Co. and two of its employees.

Paul Stewart and his coffee company, Coffee Pro Inc., won the verdict against Leroy Hill Coffee Co., which is owned by his estranged father-in-law, Leroy Hill. The jury’s verdict also went against company vice president Greg King and salesperson Rick Gates.

The defendants were accused of slandering Coffee Pro by criticizing its product and ethics and by describing one of the company’s salespeople as a coffee thief and a homosexual.

“I think we got a good verdict,” Stewart said.

Hill, 72, was not in the courtroom when the verdict was returned. He had originally been a defendant, but Circuit Judge James Woods earlier dismissed him from the case, ruling that the plaintiffs had not presented evidence that he personally defamed anyone.

Defense attorney Danny Mims said his clients probably will appeal and will seek to have the size of the verdict reduced.

Leroy Hill Coffee, based in Mobile, has 22 locations with branches in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi, according to its promotional material.

Stewart started working for Hill after high school, married Hill’s daughter and worked for Hill’s company for 17 years, rising to the title of vice president in charge of sales. He left the company in 1994.

It was about that time that Hill was charged with orchestrating bogus bids so he could buy state land adjoining his 3,500-acre ranch in Grand Bay. A federal court jury convicted Hill of mail fraud, and he served more than a year in prison.

Hill was questioned about the case during testimony. During that court appearance, Hill said his family had been “torn apart” by personal and business disputes.

Stewart started Coffee Pro in 1997. Both companies supply coffee to convenience stores and other businesses.

The jury awarded Coffee Pro $1.2 million in compensatory damages and $1.2 million in punitive damages from Leroy Hill Coffee Co. and the two employees. The jury awarded Stewart $2 in compensatory damages and $100,000 in punitive damages from Leroy Hill Coffee Co.

Coffee Pro attorney Vince Kilborn said he hoped “this will set a standard in Mobile that slandering the competition is not permitted.”

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) – A Fresno man who pleaded guilty to stabbing another man to death was suffering from “gay panic,” his lawyers argued before a judge, who gave the defendant the minimum sentence – four years in jail.

Estanislao Martinez admitted stabbing Joel Robles 20 times after finding out the victim, who he had brought home, was not a woman, but a cross-dressing man.

A Fresno County Superior Court judge handed down the sentence, which gay and lesbian activists said was too light and didn’t fit the crime.

“If I just stole money from you, I’d serve more time than this person did for stabbing someone 20 times,” said Charlotte Jenks, executive director of the Central California Pride Network.

Martinez pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter for killing Robles last August. After stabbing the victim, he jumped out of an apartment window, and was found wandering naked along Highway 41, according to court testimony.

Martinez’s attorneys argued in Fresno County Superior Court their client panicked and became enraged when he found out Robles was a transvestite.

Legal experts said using the “gay panic” defense helped reduce the sentence in this case.

“I think it is because most people, when they’re going to have a relationship with someone, expect it to be the opposite sex. I think when you find out it’s not, all kinds of things run through your mind,” said defense expert Ernest Kinney.

The prosecutor refused to comment on the case.

PEORIA, Ill. (AP) – Operating on few hours of sleep the night before, Buff Carmichael pulled into the parking lot behind New Church United Church of Christ, midway in a 160-mile delivery route for the monthly issue of Prairie Flame. He was met by Peoria bureau chief Carole Hoke. Both are double shifters, working regular day jobs and dedicating evening and weekend time to free speech and human rights issues for the gay community.

“I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think it was important,” Carmichael said after dropping off just under 600 copies of Prairie Flame for Peoria readers. “If I go on to Champaign, I won’t be home until shortly before midnight, but I may decide to deliver papers to Champaign tomorrow night.”

He looked tired.

Prairie Flame, a 12-page monthly tabloid, is the largest newspaper in Illinois outside Chicago for the gay community. As founder and publisher, Carmichael was recognized by the American Civil Liberties Union in Illinois with its 2003 Freedom of Expression Award.

Prairie Flame never makes money, occasionally breaks even, has no full-time paid staff, and gives voice to the voiceless. It advocates for legislation and recognition of basic human rights. It establishes a sense of community and lists resources.

Asked how he justifies the effort and cost, Carmichael became thoughtful.

He’s a 57-year-old state employee whose journalism background before founding Prairie Flame in 1996 was limited to having had a paper route as a boy growing up in Texas. He’s a soft-spoken Southerner with firsthand experience with discrimination and hatred. His parents died before he “came out,” but he thinks they suspected and would have been appalled. His former wife and his children, he suspects, may never forgive him.

When he finally answered the question, choosing his words with deliberation, he said, “A teenager is alive today who will be dead next year without Prairie Flame, and the cause of death will be suicide. People who are HIV negative today will be HIV positive next year without Prairie Flame.

“It’s all about self-esteem, seeing yourself as valuable and taking care of yourself.”

Hector Martinez, a Peoria advocate for gay rights, said, “Buff is tireless. This has been an uphill battle for years and years. We’re lucky to have him. People can’t go to Chicago all the time. You need a lawyer in Tremont or a doctor in Peoria or a dentist or realtor or therapist here where you live.”

Carmichael printed 2,000 copies of the first issue of Prairie Flame and still has about 1,200 stacked in his cramped editorial offices in Springfield. Today, he prints 6,500 copies a month.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – A former Republican lawmaker who helped lead last year’s campaign for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage has been appointed chair of the Missouri Women’s Council.

Vicky Hartzler, 44, of Harrisonville, has served on the council since July, and was announced as Republican Gov. Matt Blunt’s selection for its chair. If confirmed by the Senate, her term would run through Dec. 6, 2007.

She replaces Kimberly Carlos, a Kansas City Democrat who the governor’s office said resigned.

Hartzler served in the House from 1995 to 2001. Last year, she served as spokesperson for the Coalition to Protect Marriage in Missouri, a group that supported a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Voters passed the amendment with 71 percent of the vote in August 2004.

A Blunt spokesperson said Hartzler’s support of the same-sex marriage ban had no effect on her appointment, although the governor also supported the ballot measure.

“She’s an eminently qualified former state representative held in high regard by both parties,” said Blunt spokesperson Jessica Robinson.

The Missouri Women’s Council was created by the Legislature in 1985 to identify and address issues affecting the employment and economic status of women. The council has 15 members.

Hartzler also is co-owner of Hartzler Equipment Co. and Hartzler Farms Inc.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) – The city is preparing to report HIV cases by name rather than using a coded system despite activists’ concerns about confidentiality.

The city Board of Health unanimously approved the change, effective Oct. 1. Even critic Ronda Goldfein, executive director of the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania, told a public hearing, “It’s a bad idea whose time has come.”

The state, which uses a name-based system, gave the city a one-year waiver when activists and Mayor John Street argued for a coded system they said would protect privacy, prevent discrimination and encourage HIV testing.

The reporting proved expensive and incomplete, however, with physicians and hospitals often failing to report data such as birth dates necessary to encode the case information sent to the state Health Department.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) – A northern Virginia real estate firm committed housing discrimination when it sold an Alexandria home to a married couple instead of a gay man willing to pay more, city officials determined.

Lawrence Cummings accused the McLean branch of Long and Foster of discrimination based on sexual orientation and marital status. It was unclear immediately after the ruling upon which grounds the real estate company was found guilty.

Alexandria Human Rights Commission members will issue recommendations for penalties against the company, including up to $5,000 per breach of city housing code, within 30 days, said Priscilla Annamanthodo, who worked on the case.

The decision followed weeks of investigation into the 2004 incident.

It was early February when Cummings spotted the home, a four-bedroom rancher in the Beverly Hills section of Alexandria.

Smitten, Cummings was prepared to pay up to $600,000 – well above the listing price of $555,000, according to his attorney, Dale Edwin Sanders. But the homeowners held out and eventually sold it to a husband and wife for the original asking price.

Cummings has since reached an undisclosed settlement with the original homeowners.

City code prohibits denying housing based on race, color, sexual orientation or other social characteristics.

Brien Roche, an attorney representing Long and Foster, said the homeowners’ decision was based on personality – not personal relationships.

“[The other] buyer went out of their way to express their sincere interest in the house,” Roche said, adding that as far as Cummings’ sexual preference, “he never disclosed it, we never asked about it and it was never discussed.”

But Sanders said real estate agents were suspicious after his client, an unmarried, 52-year-old interior decorator, showed up to view the house with other men.

He pointed to transcripts of a telephone message left by a Long and Foster agent as well as a conversation in which real estate agent Jackie Moore admitted to another agent that the homeowners wanted to sell the house to “a family who would raise their children in it.”

“This tape-recording and transcript is as close any tribunal will ever see to a smoking gun confession of discrimination,” Sanders wrote in a post-hearing brief.