41 years later, will Jim Morrison be pardoned?

New York: It was a classic skirmish of the 1960s culture war, pitting a nonconformist rock star and his bohemian fans against clean-cut defenders of acceptable behavior, the counterculture against the mainstream, and Jim Morrison against Anita Bryant.

Now the governor of Florida says he will seek to put an end to it by pursuing a posthumous pardon for two criminal convictions that Morrison, the frontman for the Doors, received after some very bad behavior at a 1969 concert in Miami.

But the possibility of forgiveness comes with memories of the socially polarized background that led to Morrison's trial, as well as a lingering sense that the cultural flames ignited in that era have not been fully extinguished.

"The battle then was the battle that's being fought today," said Ray Manzarek, the longtime keyboardist for the Doors. "It's the battle that America has been fighting."

Time has not diminished the passions of Doors fans and sympathizers, who have pursued a four-decade crusade to reverse Morrison's convictions, including for exposing himself onstage on that night in Miami. For them, it is a matter of justice as well as cultural grievance. The case lives on not only because they think the charges against Morrison were trumped up, but also because they believe it was used to discredit the counterculture they savored.

Florida's governor, Charlie Crist, a Republican turned independent who lost a November bid for the United States Senate and whose term expires in January, seemed to align himself with this view in explaining why he will submit Morrison's name to a state clemency board next month.

"The more that I've read about the case and the more I get briefed on it," Mr. Crist said in an interview on Tuesday, "the more convinced I am that maybe an injustice has been done here."

For those on the other side, the passion has dimmed, but a sour taste lingers. The anger that once brought them to the barricades has dulled to an impatient pique at the notion that the fate of a dead rock star still commands attention 40 years later.

The fight began on March 1, 1969, when the Doors played a raucous concert at Dinner Key Auditorium in Miami. An intoxicated Morrison stumbled through songs like "Light My Fire" and "Break On Through (To the Other Side)," taunted the crowd and threatened to expose himself before fans mobbed the stage. A newspaper review said the singer appeared to simulate masturbation during his performance, and the concert was investigated by a Miami crime commission as six arrest warrants were issued for Morrison, including one for a felony charge of lewd and lascivious behavior.

In the ensuing outrage, several other nearby Doors concerts were canceled. On March 23, the Orange Bowl became the scene of a Rally for Decency, organized by local high school students. Some 30,000 teenagers and adults gathered for performances and speeches on virtue by Jackie Gleason, Anita Bryant and the Lettermen. (President Richard M. Nixon later wrote a letter to the rally's organizers saying they had shown "admirable initiative.")

Morrison, meanwhile, was tried in Miami in 1970 and convicted on misdemeanor charges of profanity and indecent exposure. He was fined $500 and sentenced to six months in jail but never served the time; he was appealing the conviction when he died in Paris in 1971 at 27.

That decades-old outcome has never sat right with many Doors fans, who argue that Morrison was not tried by a jury of his peers (given that his jurors were all older than 40); that the verdict, which found him not guilty of drunkenness but guilty of acts resulting from it, was contradictory; and that none of the photographs submitted as evidence could definitively show he had exposed himself.

Mr. Manzarek, of the Doors, said this week that concertgoers who thought they saw Morrison's anatomy were probably experiencing "a mass hallucination."

Supporters like Dave Diamond, a 37-year-old freelance television producer from Dayton, Ohio, have made it their mission to gather and archive information about the case and keep it in front of the public -- not to mention public servants.

Mr. Diamond, who has produced an 11-part YouTube video series in which he discusses facts and perceived misconceptions about the concert and trial, has also mounted letter-writing and petition campaigns calling for Governor Crist's intervention.

Mr. Diamond said these efforts were not pursued to glorify a rock god but to see justice carried out.

"Just about every Doors bio that you read," he said, "it all says the same thing: Jim Morrison died at the age of 27, pending appeal. So our point is, O.K., what happened to that appeal?"

Mr. Manzarek spoke for many survivors of the Woodstock era when he suggested that a pardon for Morrison would help offset the persecution that the '60s-era counterculture felt it suffered at the hands of the American mainstream.

"It was the battle of the conservatives versus the liberals," he said, "the people who could tolerate a theatrical performance and the people who wanted decency and purity above all things."

He added that the Doors and the fateful Miami concert "were not the beginning of the culture war, but that era was the beginning of the culture war: the straight versus the hip, the lovers versus the killers."

But others who lived through this tumultuous era say a just verdict was reached in 1970 and wonder why Morrison, whose death was accelerated by rampant drug and alcohol abuse, deserves a chance at vindication.

Claude R. Kirk Jr., who was Florida's governor from 1967 to 1971, seemed annoyed to be asked about the Morrison case by telephone this week.

"There's a lot more important things to think about than that," Mr. Kirk said. "The right things were done, and Morrison died in the condition he elected to die."

"The state didn't do anything to him," Mr. Kirk added. "It tried him and found him guilty. Why would you pardon him, then?"

Katherine Fernandez Rundle, the current state attorney of Miami-Dade County, whose office would customarily be asked to weigh in on possible pardons, said in a statement that "it is not worth the time, the expense or the use of precious staff resources to uphold" Morrison's convictions.

"While I can never condone Morrison's actions of exposing himself to an audience," Ms. Fernandez Rundle wrote, "I will not waste my lawyers' time in an effort to fight an attempted pardon."

Robert C. Josefsberg, a lawyer who defended Morrison at the trial, said in an interview that reaction to Morrison's perceived offenses in 1969 was overblown.

"Not that I'm saying dropping your pants in public is acceptable," Mr. Josefsberg said. "It's not. It's also not the worst thing in the world that ever happened."

Mr. Josefsberg was skeptical of whether Morrison would satisfy the criteria of a clemency board wanting to see that he changed his ways after his conviction.

"Jim's a total loser, in terms of rehabilitation and what he's done," he said. "He's shown no remorse, no sorrow."

Procedurally, the next and last instance in which Florida's clemency board could grant Morrison a pardon before Governor Crist leaves office is at a meeting on Dec. 9 -- one day after what would have been the singer's 67th birthday.

In addition to Governor Crist, who sits on the four-member board, two others would have to support the pardon. Morrison advocates hope that other recent acts of clemency shown to dead celebrities -- the former New York governor George E. Pataki's pardon of Lenny Bruce in 2003; the annulment of Kenneth L. Lay's conviction in 2006 -- will influence the board to vote in the affirmative.

As the decision approaches, one wonders whether expunging these misconducts from Morrison's record would not somehow diminish his standing as a rebellious rock star who operated outside societal norms. But his adherents say it is a trade-off they are willing to make.

"There's absolutely nothing iconic about getting convicted in criminal court," Mr. Diamond said.

Whether or not the pardon is granted, he added, "He's still going to be Jim Morrison."