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Rock icon and Doors lead singer Jim Morrison was pardoned today by the Florida Executive Clemency Board. Morrison was convicted of exposing himself and being profane during a 1969 concert in Miami. As Mike Vasilinda tells us, the pardon was not without controversy.

There are no pictures of Morrison exposing himself at this 1969 concert in Miami. Ed Moore was 17 when he attended the concert. He says he saw nothing but a drunk on stage who wasn’t worth the money.

“Jim Morrison shows up hammered, totally hammered,” Moore said. “He was so inebriated he didn’t know where he was. It was just really a bad concert.”

In offering the pardon, Governor Charlie Crist pointed out that since Morrison died while the case was on appeal, the law at the time would have allowed the family to have the case thrown out.

“At the time of Morrison’s death, a convicted defendant who died before the appeal was heard, was entitled to have the conviction dismissed so that he was again presumed innocent,” Crist said.

The pardon was not without controversy.

Opposition came from a retired Miami police officer who was here to protest the pardon. He was not at the concert or even on the force at the time, but he did bring a letter from the arresting officer.

“Eventually his drug use killed him in a Paris bar bathroom from a heroine overdose,” Officer Angel Lago said. “This is the wrong message to send our youth.”

In the end, the other three members of the Clemency board made it clear they weren’t retrying the case and that their’s was a vote of mercy.

Forty years after the arrest, the pardon was approved unanimously.

Morrison was one of more than a handful of pardons granted today. Others included a sex offender and a drug addict.