He was convicted of a hate crime for beating a black man in Howard Beach - but Nicholas (Fat Nick) Minucci says his prison photo album proves he's no racist.
"Look at the pictures, look at the pictures!" he implored in an exclusive interview with the Daily News. "Do I need to say more?"
The Polaroids show Minucci, 21, mugging with his fellow jailbirds. What he wants people to notice is that the other men are black.
He says that, unlike police, prosecutors, politicians and much of the public, the inmates at the maximum-security lockup in Dannemora, N.Y., know he's not a bigot.
"They embraced me when I got here," he said. "I go to the visiting floor and they call out, 'Hey, Fat Nick, Fat Nick is on the floor.'"
On Tuesday it will be a year since Minucci was sentenced to 15 years in prison for bashing Glenn Moore on the head on June 29, 2005.
He's Slim Nick now, having lost 75 pounds behind bars, and is serving his time in a general-population cellblock with 250 other men near the Canadian border, 330 miles from his Queens home.
The passage of a year has not dampened his insistence that he's innocent.
"You see what they did to me?" he said on the telephone as his grandfather Dominic Minucci showed the Daily News the jailhouse photos.
"Why did they do this to me? They got me in this fix. Why did they do this to me?" he asked desperately.
He seems confident he can still persuade the world Moore hurt his head when he fell during a confrontation with Minucci and his buddies.
And he still defends his use of the N-word during the fracas.
"That's just me, that's the way I talk," he said.
Again he returns to the subject of photos, noting his seventh-grade class picture proves he grew up with blacks and that he uses the slur as a term of endearment.
"Everybody knows this was politics," he said of his conviction, referring to his belief that the mayoral election spurred authorities to gang up on him.
The beating of Moore drew protests from the Rev. Al Sharpton and others, and invited comparisons to a deadly assault on black teens by whites in Howard Beach in 1986.
Minucci was driving around in a Cadillac Escalade when buddy Frankie Agostini - now known as "that rat" to Minucci and his family - told him he was almost robbed by three black men.
Minucci, Agostini and pal Anthony Ench started combing the darkened streets until they found Moore, then 23. They chased him, stole his sneakers and other gear, and Minucci beat him on the head with a bat.
Agostini, the son of a retired city detective, cut a deal and avoided jail. Ench later pleaded guilty for a three-year sentence and is free.
Both testified against Minucci, who has an estimated 10-1/2 years left on his sentence for assault and robbery as a hate crime and other charges.
In prison, the 10th-grade dropout attends school three hours a day, studies for his GED, works out and spends time playing cards and watching television alone in his cell.
"I'm good, I'm good," he said.
The hardest part of hard time is being apart from his family, especially his grandfather, who is too elderly and ill to make the six-hour trip every six weeks with Minucci's mother, sister and uncle.
"I want to come home and be with my family," Minucci moaned. "I want to put this behind me. Worst-case scenario, I'll be 34 when I get out."
Ever the optimist, though, the former Fat Nick is sure the worst won't come to pass.
"It will never happen," he said, certain that his conviction will be overturned on appeal.
After all, he said, he only has to look at those Polaroids of him mugging with his AfricanAmerican friends to be sure he couldn't have done what a jury said he did.
"Look at those pictures," he urged once more. "Do I need to say more? Racist? Look at the pictures!"
