When the music's over, Jim Morrison's finally cleared.
A Florida parole board today issued a posthumous pardon to the Doors' late, legendary frontman for his 1971 arrest and conviction for exposing his nether regions during a Miami concert.
MORE: Get everything we have on Jim Morrison
The state's Board of Executive Clemency took a cue from outgoing Gov. Charlie Crist and voted to forgive Morrison for the purported incident at a 1969 concert that earned him a six-month jail term and a $500 fine.
The singer, however, died in Paris in 1972 from a heart attack before his appeal of the verdict could be heard.
Morrison's case has taken on mythological status. Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek has long insisted that Morrison was guilty of nothing more than being drunk during the show at the Dinner Key Auditorium.
"It never actually happened. It was mass hypnosis," Manzarek told the Washington Post. "He was just doing a mind trip--as they would say--a mind trip on the audience and they totally fell for it."
Manzarek added that prosecutors at the time never produced any evidence, photographic or otherwise, that the Lizard King unzipped his fly and unleashed his little Jimmy.
Crist, a self-proclaimed Doors fan who leaves the statehouse on Jan. 4, first took up the fight in 2007 and pushed hard for the clemency ruling during his final weeks in office.
Speaking on Morrison's behalf at the hearing, he expressed doubts about the indecency too.
"In this case, guilt or innocence is in God's hands, not ours. That is why I ask my colleagues today to pardon Jim Morrison," Crist said.
There were some dissenters, however. Angel Lago, a retired policeman who was a pal of one of the cops who arrested Morrison, was quoted by the Palm Beach Post as saying the pardon implies the officers lied about what they witnessed.
""I think this is a wrong message to send the youth of this country. I think it's absolutely wrong," said Lago.
Meanwhile,
Patricia Kennealy Morrison, who claims to have been married to Morrison in a pagan ceremony, told the Associated Press that the movie was a political ploy. She would rather the conviction be expunged or the verdict overturned as fraud than simply pardoned.
No matter. The board voted unanimously to forgive Morrison, who was a Florida native, having been born in Melbourne.
"It's not about the guilt or innocence of the man and it's not about retrying the case here today. That's not what this is about," added Crist. "We have had an opportunity for about 40 years for this son of Florida whose body of work has endured and has this blot on his record, if you will, for something that he may or may not have done when he was essentially a kid."
Glad to know he's got his priorities straight.