By Luisa Yanez Sun-Sentinel. Web-posted: 11:25 p.m. Feb. 20, 2000
MIAMI -- The federal judge assigned to the high-profile case of 6-year-old Elián Gonzalez apparently suffered a stroke on Sunday, a development that could prompt a delay in a crucial court hearing set for Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge William M. Hoeveler, 77, was itted to HealthSouth Doctors' Hospital in Coral Gables, hospital spokeswoman Elsa Figueredo said.
She would not comment on his condition, saying Hoeveler's physician would issue a statement today.
The veteran judge was at home when he suffered what may have been a stroke, said colleagues who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Chief U.S. District Judge Edward Davis said the hearing will go on as scheduled, but who will preside is a question mark.
In another development on Sunday, a nun involved in a meeting between Elián and his Cuban grandmothers. said she decided the boy should remain in the United States after she was told one of the grandmothers wanted to defect.
Elián is at the center of a custody battle involving his relatives in Miami and his father in Cuba, who wants him returned to the island nation.
After meeting with the grandmothers last month at her home in Miami Beach, Sister Jeanne O'Laughlin, president of Barry University, said she was abandoning her neutral stance.
O'Laughlin was influenced to change her position by several things she had been told about the case by people she trusted, Michele Morris, a spokeswoman for Barry, said on Sunday.
O'Laughlin didn't want to divulge the information to the media after the reunion because she heard it secondhand, Morris said.
The Miami Herald reported on Sunday that one of the grandmothers told O'Laughlin directly that she wanted to defect. But O'Laughlin said in a prepared statement that "unfortunately the article had some misinformation. I never met with the grandmothers alone."
The Herald's executive editor, Martin Baron, said Sunday night in a prepared statement, "We can say without hesitation that our story was an accurate of what Sister Jeanne told us."
Judge Hoeveler had been scheduled to hear arguments from attorneys for the U.S. government and the boy's Miami relatives on an important legal point: whether the judge had jurisdiction in Elián's case. If Hoeveler -- or a replacement judge -- rules he does not, the boy's return to Cuba
could be imminent, barring other legal maneuvers.
Hoeveler, who presided over the trial of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, was assigned to the Elián case last month after U.S. Judge James Lawrence King bowed out, citing possible conflicts.
Information from The Associated Press supplemented this report.
Luisa Yanez can be reached at lyanez @ sun-sentinel.com or 305-810-5007.
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