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Floyd Abrams, Laurence Tribe, Robin Williams, Margaret Cho, Martin Garbus and others are supporting a petition asking New York State Governor George Pataki to pardon legendary comedian Lenny Br

The Editors

June 26, 2003

Floyd Abrams, Laurence Tribe, Robin Williams, Margaret Cho, Martin Garbus and others are supporting a petition asking New York State Governor George Pataki to pardon legendary comedian Lenny Bruce (1925-66) posthumously. The petition documents how Bruce was prosecuted in 1964 for obscenities uttered in a Greenwich Village nightclub performance and, after a six-month trial, convicted and sentenced to a term on Rikers Island. He subsequently died of a drug overdose with the conviction still on the books. In 1968 the obscenity conviction of Bruce’s co-defendant, the nightclub owner, was reversed, strongly suggesting that Bruce’s conviction would have been reversed, too. To lend support to the pardon effort, go to www.trialsoflennybruce.com/pardon.htm.

The Editors


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