ECLIPSED BY LENNY BRUCE PARDON, A CLEMENCY THAT COUNTS

Lenny Bruce got nearly all the attention when Gov. George E. Pataki
issued his posthumous pardon last week. But a 47-year-old inmate of
state prison is likely to get a more practical benefit from a
less-noticed clemency order issued the same day.

Because the governor commuted his sentence, the inmate, Emmanuel
Nkemakolam, who was convicted of felony drug possession in Queens in
1992, is expected to walk out of the Mohawk Correctional Facility in
Rome, N.Y., after a final hearing in mid-January.

As a parable of changing ideas about obscenity, Mr. Bruce's story may
have been of broader interest. But Mr. Nkemakolam's tale was also a
portrait of changing attitudes about the law, in his case New York's
stern Rockefeller-era drug laws, which mandate that judges impose long
sentences.

Governor Pataki has been urging reform for several years. He has often
granted Christmas-season clemency to one or more model prisoners
serving long sentences. In the announcement from the governor's office
about the two clemency orders issued last week, Mr. Nkemakolam was
listed first, before the decision on Mr. Bruce.

"Mr. Nkemakolam," it said, "has worked hard to earn a second
chance."

On Dec. 24, 1991, Mr. Nkemakolam's luggage was chosen for a random
search at Kennedy International Airport, where he had arrived on a
flight from Lagos, Nigeria. Customs agents found more than four ounces
of heroin in a hidden compartment in one of his bags.

He was tried, convicted and sentenced to 15 years to life. His appeals
failed. But his story, like those of some other people convicted under
the Rockefeller laws, included some sympathetic aspects from the start.

"I probably would have sentenced him to less if I could have," James
P. Griffin, the acting justice of the State Supreme Court in Queens
who presided over Mr. Nkemakolam's jury trial, said in an interview on
Friday. He said he had been "a little surprised" at the jury verdict.

The defense lawyer who represented Mr. Nkemakolam at the trial in
1992, Ronald S. Nir, said on Friday that Mr. Nkemakolam -- a graduate
of Southwestern Oklahoma State University -- was far from the typical
drug mule. He was an accountant for a New Jersey company and had no
criminal record. He and his wife, an American he met in college, lived
in New Jersey with their three children.

"All along, he said he didn't know what was in the bag," Mr. Nir
said.

Mr. Nkemakolam maintained that he had been in Nigeria to visit his
ailing mother and, at the Lagos airport as he was leaving, had run
into an old classmate from his childhood. The former classmate, Mr.
Nkemakolam said, had too much luggage and asked if he would carry the
extra bag.

Justice Griffin said there was enough evidence to support the guilty
verdict, though the case was a "close call." He remembered that one of
the customs agents testified that Mr. Nkemakolam "did not seem at all
nervous," which could have been an indication that he really did not
know about the heroin.

"He certainly was not a career criminal," Justice Griffin
said.

Prosecutors at the Queens district attorney's office declined to
comment about the case.

Mr. Nir said that before the trial, the prosecutors offered a deal
that could have gotten Mr. Nkemakolam out of prison in as little as
three years, but that he refused it. "He said he wasn't guilty," Mr.
Nir said.

Prisons, of course, are full of people who insist they are innocent.
As a result, lawyers who have followed Mr. Pataki's clemency decisions
say, only exemplary prisoners have a chance at clemency. Scores of
applications are reviewed every year.

Prison officials said last week that an interview with Mr. Nkemakolam
would not be permitted, but the sketchy information released by the
governor's office suggested that he was about as exemplary as
prisoners come. He had an "excellent disciplinary record" and served
as a teacher's aide, a literacy volunteer and an assistant in the
prison's law library.

He earned two certificates for "outstanding cell" during housekeeping
inspections and took part in prison ministry and fellowship.

Mr. Nir, the defense lawyer, said he had not heard from Mr. Nkemakolam
in several years but had not forgotten him. "He could not believe he
was in jail," he said.