MAN IN WHEELCHAIR FACES THIRD STRIKE

He says his disability makes the possible punishment excessive. He
allegedly bought a macadamia nut he thought was rock cocaine.

A marshal's deputy pushed the suspect into the courtroom Monday wheelchair
to the defense table.

Fost Morris, 56, who lost both legs to diabetes, who suffered three heart
attacks in recent years, whose right arm is scarred from cancer surgery,
hardly struck an imposing courtroom presence as he launched what he viewed
as a fight for his life.

This time, the fight that had nothing to do with life-threatening disease.

Morris could get 25 years to life under California's "three strikes, you're
out" law.

Santa Ana police say Morris tried to buy on cocaine rock during an
undercover sting in August. He actually bought a decoy - a macadamia nut.

Robbery and burglary convictions between 1959 and 1981 make him eligible
for the "three strikes" punishment.

Central Orange County Municipal Court Judge Steven L. Perk refused Monday -
for the second time in the case - to offer Morris anything less than the
maximum punishment.

Rulings by the California Supreme Court allow judges to ignore defendants'
previous convictions if they feel 25 years to life in prison would be
excessive. But Perk said Morris' record is too serious to offer him
anything less.

Morris, in an interview at Orange County Jail, said he is baffled that the
judge and the District Attorney's Office want to give him the maximum
punishment.

No longer, Morris said, is he the gun-toting thug who struck fear in people
he robbed in Texas, Los Angeles and San Diego more than 20 years ago.

Today, in the medical ward of Orange Count Jail, Morris needs other inmates
to help him take a shower. County nurses offer him medical attention around
the clock. Keeping him in custody, he said, is a wast of money.

"What can I do? I'm dying in a wheelchair," Morris said at the jail
visiting booth. "I'm not doing crime. I'm paralyzed."

Deputy District Attorney Steve Bickel said that while the attempted
purchase of a single chunk of rock cocaine is not a serious offense, Morris
is a serious felon.

Morris admits that he has spent 28 of his 56 years behind bars. He has 11
felony convictions, eight of them serious enough to be considered strikes
under California law, Bickel said.

"Looking at him, I do feel sorry for him. The guy's a double-amputee. He's
got no legs," Bickel said. "(But) At some point, you have to say, enough is
enough." You have to put a stop to it. The guy has a 40-year felony
record."

The prosecutor does not buy Morris' insistence that he should be spared a
lengthy sentence because of the disabilities. In 1995, Morris received his
last previous felony conviction - petty theft with a prior theft conviction
- - for placing a fifth of whiskey in his wheelchair and pushing himself out
of a south Orange County supermarket.

"Who's to say he can't get a gun and shoot somebody from a wheelchair?"
Bickel said. "He can go in and steal in his wheelchair. What if he rolled
into a jewelry store and stole a diamond?"

Deputy Public Defender Maria Hernandez said voters who passed the "three
strikes" law in 1994 did not have in mind sick, disabled drug addicts such
as Morris, caught buying a roasted nut.

It was a Santa Ana police drug operation on West Camile Street that landed
Morris in trouble again. He was sitting in the passenger seat of his
friend's Geosedan when he gave $20 to undercover officer Ernesto Conde in
exchange for what he thought would be a piece of rock cocaine, police said.

Officers swarmed in for the arrest, then had to carry Morris out of the
car. His folded-up wheelchair was in the back seat.

He has been in jail ever since, held on $100,000 bail. He is scheduled to
return to court Jan.27 for arraignment in Superior Court.

Morris told a reporter he hopes a new judge will consider showing leniency.

"They're sentencing me to death for a macadamia nut," he said. "They might
as well give me the death penalty. This is a death sentence for me."