TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – This is the end for 40-year-old convictions that left Jim Morrison marked with what today would be considered sex-offender status. Florida’s Clemency Board, egged on by departing Gov. Charlie Crist, pardoned The Doors’ long-dead singer Thursday on indecent exposure and profanity charges stemming from a wild concert.
Some people who were at the Miami show on March 1, 1969, insist even today that he exposed himself, though others in the audience and Morrison’s bandmates contend he was just teasing the crowd and only pretended to do the deed. Crist said there was enough doubt about what happened at the Dinner Key Auditorium to justify a pardon.
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The board, which consists of Crist and three others, voted unanimously to pardon Morrison as they granted several other pardons Thursday. At the hearing, the governor called the convictions a “blot” on the record of an accomplished artist for “something he may or may not have done.”
Morrison had received a six-month jail sentence — never served — and a $500 fine for the 1970 convictions, which carried consequences for the band. Ray Manzarek, The Doors’ keyboard player, said Miami was supposed to be the start of a 20-city tour, but every venue canceled after Morrison’s arrest.
Morrison’s appeals were never resolved. He was found dead in a Paris bathtub in 1971 at age 27.
Tales of comics-page reporter winding down
CHICAGO – No more late nights and looming deadlines for globetrotting reporter Brenda Starr.
The redheaded reporter, whose first appearance came in a Chicago Tribune comic book insert in June 1940, is putting the notebook away for good next month. Writer Mary Schmich and artist June Brigman say they’ve decided to end their work on the seven-day-a-week strip, which was created by Dale Messick. The final episode will be published Jan. 2.
But Brenda won’t be gone for good. The first volume of a Tribune Media Services collection of the comic’s daily and Sunday strips is due to come out in June.
Snipes enters prison after losing tax battle
LEWIS RUN, Pa. – Actor Wesley Snipes began serving a three-year sentence at a federal prison in Pennsylvania on Thursday for failure to file income tax returns.
Snipes, 48, arrived shortly before noon at the Federal Correctional Institution McKean in the tiny own of Lewis Run. The minimum-security prison camp has no fences around its perimeter and provides the 300 nonviolent inmates with two-man rooms and double-feature movie showings Friday through Sunday.
According to U.S. prosecutors, the actor failed to file any tax returns for at least a decade, and owed $2.7 million in taxes on $13.8 million in income from 1999 to 2001 alone.
Stern stays put at Sirius
NEW YORK – After all his threats to leave, and others’ speculation on where he might go, Howard Stern is staying put at Sirius XM.
The shock jock announced on his show Thursday that he has signed a new five-year contract with the satellite radio company. The deal, which runs through the end of 2015, provides that Sirius XM can now transmit Stern’s show to mobile devices. No other terms will be disclosed.
Stern had been locked for months in stormy negotiations as his original five-year contract with Sirius radio, worth a breathtaking $500 million, neared its expiration just days from now. Sirius and then-rival XM radio merged in 2008.
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