No. 60018 first heard about it from another inmate.

"Did you read the paper?"

He found it. He read it. Read it again.

And for the first time since his manslaughter conviction two years ago, Tony Waadah, a political refugee from Nigeria who lost control of his car and killed a Firth woman, saw a ray of legal hope.

The newspaper story was about a Nov. 10 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on another refugee's case. In it, the court ruled a Haitian who injured two people while driving drunk could not be deported because Driving Under the Influence was a crime of negligence, not violence.

The key, the court said, was intent.

"I'm glad to see the court's decision comes this way," Waadah said during an interview at the Nebraska State Penitentiary. "Based on my own situation, I wasn't impaired by alcohol or drugs. It was an accident.

"I was just going to the store. I wasn't planning for it."

Waadah was driving west on O Street at about 35th Street on July 22, 2000, when he lost control of his 1992 Ford Taurus, drove into a parking lot and hit Connie S. McCullough, 39.

He did not, he said, intend to kill McCullough, who was standing with other spectators along the crowded street during an informal parade of Americruise hotrod cars.

He was charged with manslaughter and began serving a one- to three-year prison sentence in March.

Only death, Waadah said, is worse than prison.

Prison is a place where people tell you how many envelopes you may have in your locker, he said, and how many bars of soap. It's a place where you stand naked "in front of every Tom, Dick and Harry."

Some days have been especially hard, he said. Like the one last summer when his wife had to give up their Lincoln apartment and take their baby to go live with relatives in Connecticut.

Waadah has taped a picture of Anthony Jr., 6 months old now, to his locker.

He phones them. He says it's hard to hear the baby cry.

One day in prison, he got word from Nigeria that his oldest brother had died of a heart attack, leaving behind four kids. Before going to prison, Waadah had been sending money for their education. He said they've had to drop out.

In prison, Waadah plays soccer.

He lifts weights. At first, he could bench press 80 pounds. Now, he said, he can lift 225 pounds six times.

He turned 35 in prison. He became addicted to coffee. He lives for the once-a-week breakfast of fried eggs.

He smiles.

"The food is awful. Too much bread."

He makes $5.15 an hour at a dye-making business in the prison, working 7:30 to 11 a.m.

He spends his afternoons in the prison's law library, trying to find a way out of his legal mess.

He recently filed papers for a new trial on grounds the manslaughter charge was based on racial discrimination.

Lancaster County Attorney Gary Lacey has denied race was a factor.

A year and a half ago, the Lincoln Journal Star ran a package of stories on Waadah and his life in Nigeria before the accident on O Street. Stories in the package looked at the disparity in charges the Lancaster County attorney's office has filed against drivers in fatal auto accidents. An analysis of five years' worth of cases showed minorities and men faced stiffer charges than whites and women.

The county attorney's office skipped motor-vehicle homicide statutes and charged Waadah with manslaughter based on misdemeanor charges of driving carelessly and too fast for conditions.

County Attorney Gary Lacey has said his office chose to charge Waadah with manslaughter because it believed alcohol was a factor, although his office did not present evidence of alcohol impairment at Waadah's trial.

After the accident, Waadah's blood alcohol content was 0.06, well under the legal limit,  and he passed a field-sobriety test at the scene.

Manslaughter is easier to prove than felony motor-vehicle homicide, legal experts say. Prosecutors simply must show a crime was committed and a death resulted from it.

The local chapter of the NAACP protested the charge and the conviction. So did the local chapters of Amnesty International and Nebraskans for Peace.

Scores of people — friends, relatives, co-workers — wrote letters to the trial judge on Waadah's behalf.

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Immigration officials have treated crimes such as DUI and manslaughter — even shoplifting — as crimes of "moral turpitude," resulting in almost automatic deportation. But if the Supreme Court's ruling means immigration judges must now look at a person's intent to do violence, Waadah says, maybe he has a chance to stay in this country.

Waadah and his supporters say McCullough's death was a tragic accident and the manslaughter charge was unfair.

McCullough's mother, Verla Russell of York, has said she sees it as an accident, too, and does not want Waadah deported or even in prison.

Russell has said Connie would have seen it as an accident, too.

Before the accident, Waadah was a leader of his Ogoni tribe in Lincoln.  He had spoken to groups around town about human rights issues in Africa. He had made many American friends and had worked his way up to banquet captain at Embassy Suites in Lincoln.

"I feel this (Supreme Court) case gives me at least a 75 percent assurance," Waadah said. "But then the justice system in the United States has screwed me. So there's always a doubt."

If he is deported to Nigeria, he said, there's a chance he'll be killed for his role as an anti-government activist there. Before leaving Nigeria in 1999, he had been detained and tortured.

Immigration officials here are still investigating his case.

Waadah's parole hearing is set for late February. If he is granted parole, he said, he will be sent to a federal detention center in Hastings and appear before an immigration judge within 180 days of his release.

"I have to prove (to the immigration judge) that it wasn't my intention and if I am sent back to Nigeria, I will be killed," Waadah said.

Richard Hargesheimer, local Amnesty International coordinator, also is encouraged by the Supreme Court decision. But his optimism is guarded.

"I would be very, very surprised if he wasn't paroled," he said. "But then the big question is: What is immigration going to do? There's just a whole lot of factors involved."

No matter what happens, No. 60018 says, he'll never forget the accident that killed Connie McCullough.

He has no hope of leaving that prison.

"This Supreme Court decision makes living here a little bit easier. But that accident is still going to haunt me the rest of my life."

Reach Colleen Kenney at 473-2655 or ckenney@journalstar.com.