Only the Bars Separate 2 Men’s Determination

Their roles are both enduring and unchanging.

For 22 years, triple-murderer Joseph Bernard Morse has been trying to get out of prison.

And, for all of that time, Deputy Dist. Atty. John Hewicker II has been trying to keep him there.

It began in 1969, when the California Supreme Court ordered a new trial for Morse in the 1962 bludgeon slayings of his mother and invalid sister in Chula Vista.

He was also granted a new trial in the penalty phase of his 1964 conviction for strangling a fellow inmate.

Both trials were moved because of pretrial publicity.

“We spent 13 months going up and down Southern California trying Joe Morse,” Hewicker remembered. “I had been left with a bloody rock, a baseball bat and an inadmissible confession.”

The result, though, was the same: convictions and a death sentence. The latter was overturned in 1972 when the state high court struck down the death penalty.

Since then, Morse has had a series of parole hearings. Hewicker is always there, in opposition.

In 1978, the parole board, without a hearing, set a parole date for Morse, once diagnosed as a sociopath.

The board rescinded its decision only when faced with outrage from prosecutors and a letter-writing campaign.

In prison, Morse has become a celebrity: editor of the San Quentin News, married to a wealthy widow for several years, interviewed by Truman Capote.

When he was first convicted in 1962 at age 19, he was the youngest man in California ever sentenced to death.

Now, at age 47 and with 29 years behind bars, he is considered a legal-system museum piece and has been transferred to the medical facility at Vacaville.

He may even be emulating another Vacaville inmate of similar age: Charles Manson. Like Manson, Morse has refused to submit to psychiatric evaluations.

And Wednesday, for the first time, Morse refused to appear for his own parole hearing. Like Manson.

Hewicker convinced the board to turn down Morse’s parole request; his next hearing is in five years.

Hewicker, 61, figures to attend that hearing, even if Morse doesn’t:

“Sometimes I think it’s a contest to see who will last the longest: he or I.”

Ever-Present Cameras

Free for the asking.

* Highlights at 11.

The brawl at the Padres-Mets game July 26 that involved two college students, a San Diego cop and two correctional deputies was captured on film by a cameraman for DiamondVision.

The film is being analyzed by police investigators probing the conduct that night of rookie cop John Autolino, 25.

* This Zonie invasion stuff has gone too far.

Ted Hansen swears he saw an El Pollo Loco truck near Carlsbad with a “Free Delivery” sign and Arizona license plates.

* The last interagency problem has been overcome and the long-awaited Neil Good Day Center for homeless men will open Sept. 5 near downtown.

* Who says a defense attorney can’t have a conscience?

Attorney Thomas Warwick, after Judge Herbert Hoffman sentenced his client to seven years in prison for running over and killing two teen-agers at San Onofre State Park while drunk:

“It was clear the overriding factor in his decision was to deter others from doing this. And he sent that message out to the community.

“I just wish he could have treated my client differently and sent the message through someone else.”

Land Ho

It’s commonly said that Americans don’t know geography. Apparently there are others in the same boat.

Take the bureaucrats in the Spanish government who are in charge of the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ landing in the New World in 1492.

Plans had been for full-size replicas of the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria to sail to Boston and New York, and then be trucked nonstop to San Diego.

The San Diego organizers of the celebration finally, tactfully, informed the Spaniards that San Diego is not landlocked.

Now the plans have been revised: The ships will sail through the Panama Canal and arrive in San Diego Bay on Sept. 1, 1992, for a seven-day stay.