Comedian Lenny Bruce granted posthumous pardon
The pardon — the first for a deceased person in state history — represented "a declaration of New York's commitment to upholding the First Amendment," Pataki said in a statement. "I hope this pardon serves as a reminder of the precious freedoms we are fighting to preserve as we continue to wage the war on terror."
Bruce was charged after reportedly using more than 100 obscene words during an act at Cafe Au Go Go, a Greenwich Village nightclub that was staked out by an army of plainclothes police.
The pardon came about through the efforts of authors, lawyers and comedians who believed there were significant First Amendment freedoms at stake in the effort to clear Bruce's name. His defenders say he was prosecuted for the substance of his social, political and religious satire, not for the actual words he used.
The drive to secure a pardon began this year, after publication of "The Trials of Lenny Bruce: The Fall and Rise of an American Icon" by Ronald K.L. Collins and David Skover, a professor at Seattle University School of Law.
"Lenny Bruce is almost solely responsible for creating the greatest free-speech zone in America: the comedy club," Skover said.
Bruce was known for his lacerating, often brilliant, comedic attacks on sacred cows ranging from the pope to Eleanor Roosevelt. He didn't seem to care whom he offended, and his comedy routines were liberally sprinkled with four-letter words.
The routines that received the closest scrutiny from prosecutors, Skover said, were satirical pieces on the Catholic Church and on Jacqueline Kennedy.
"When he was arrested and convicted, it was to silence and censor him, and if there's any principal that's core to the First Amendment, it's that the government is not free to silence political, social and religious critics — and Bruce was that," Skover said.
The comedian appealed his misdemeanor obscenity conviction and promptly turned it into fodder for his act. But he insisted on handling his own defense on appeal and "badly bungled" the case, said Martin Garbus, a prominent First Amendment attorney who originally represented Bruce.
Two years later, Bruce died in Los Angeles at 40 from a heroin overdose. He was spiritually and financially broken, friends said.
Joined by Robert Corn-Revere, a Washington, D.C.-based First Amendment attorney, Collins and Skover decided to lobby Pataki for a pardon.
"There's only one reason he (Pataki) would do this, and that's for the principle involved," Corn-Revere said. "We live in a free society, and you don't turn people into criminals and lock them up just for speaking their mind."
Skover, who called Bruce a "First Amendment martyr," said the prosecution of a satirist would be unthinkable now, in part because of Bruce and his ordeal.
"The injustice of his prosecution ... shut the door on that type of prosecution," he said.
Garbus said Bruce would have taken Pataki's pardon with a grain of salt.
"Lenny would be astonished that the governor had pardoned him in a manner that somehow justified America's war against terrorism," Garbus said. "If he was alive, he'd build a whole comedy routine around that."
Seattle Times staff reporter J. Patrick Coolican contributed to this report.