(RNN) – President Donald Trump could soon take the rare step of granting a posthumous pardon.
Trump announced on Saturday that he’s considering pardoning Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion.
Johnson was convicted in 1913 by an all-white jury for accompanying a white woman across state lines; the jury found him guilty of violating the Mann Act, which made it illegal to transport women across state lines for “immoral” purposes.
Johnson died in 1946. Since then, Johnson’s family, along with elected officials including Sen. John McCain and Sen. Harry Reid, have pushed for a posthumous pardon.
Depending on what Trump decides, the legendary boxer could join a notable group of people pardoned after death by U.S. presidents and governors.
Here’s a handful of interesting cases:
Lt. Henry O. Flipper
President Bill Clinton issued a pardon to Army Lt. Henry O. Flipper in 1999. Flipper was a former slave who became the first black graduate of West Point. He went on to join the "Buffalo Soldiers," black cavalrymen stationed on the Great Plains after the Civil War. In 1882 he was convicted of embezzlement in a case that appears to have been fueled by racism. Clinton called the pardon "an event that is 117 years overdue."
Jim Morrison
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist pardoned Jim Morrison, the singer for 1960s rock band The Doors, in 2010. Morrison, who died in 1971, had been convicted on misdemeanor charges of profanity and indecent exposure stemming from a 1969 concert in Miami. Morrison was sentenced to six months in jail, but he instead fled to France. He admitted to using profanity during the concert, but denied the indecent exposure charge. He was appealing his conviction just before he died. Crist, a Doors fan, granted the pardon with the rationale that Morrison’s death prevented him from exercising his right to appeal his conviction.
Lena Baker
In 2005, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles called Lena Baker’s 1944 conviction "a grievous error, as this case called out for mercy." Baker, a black maid, was convicted of killing the white man she worked for. During her trial, Baker claimed that her employer, 67-year-old E.B. Knight, had held her against her will in a grist mill, saying he’d shoot her if she tried to leave. When Knight raised a metal bar to hit her, Baker said she grabbed Knight’s gun and shot him. Just before she sat in the electric chair in 1945, Baker said: "What I done, I did in self-defense or I would have been killed myself. Where I was, I could not overcome it." The parole board said the decision to pardon Baker didn’t suggest she was innocent of killing Knight, but that she "could have been charged with voluntary manslaughter," and avoid the death penalty.
Lenny Bruce
New York Gov. George Pataki granted comedian Lenny Bruce a posthumous pardon in 2003. Bruce had been convicted of obscenity in 1964 for using more than 100 "obscene" words during a performance in Greenwich Village. He appealed the conviction, but it was still on the books when Bruce died in 1966 of a drug overdose. Bruce’s was the first posthumous pardon in New York state. Pataki called the decision "a declaration of New York’s commitment to upholding the First Amendment."
John J. “Black Jack” Kehoe
John Kehoe was executed in 1878 for his alleged role in the murder of Frank W.S. Langon, a Pennsylvania mine foreman. It was claimed at his trial that Kehoe was a leader of the “Molly Maguires,” a secret society of Irish immigrants who protested harsh working conditions with sometimes violent means. Kehoe’s execution was meant to set an example for other would-be Maguires. He was pardoned by Pennsylvania Gov. Milton Shapp in 1979. Nine years before that, Sean Connery portrayed Kehoe in the film "The Molly Maguires."
Tim Cole
In 2010, Texas Gov. Rick Perry issued the state’s first posthumous pardon to Tim Cole, who’d died in prison in 1999 while serving a 25-year sentence for rape. Cole was later exonerated of the charge as the result of DNA evidence, and because another inmate confessed to the crime. Cole, who was an Army veteran and Texas Tech student, had maintained his innocence, rejecting plea bargains that would have reduced his sentence.
Charlie Winters
President George W. Bush pardoned Charlie Winters in 2008, decades after Winter’s death. Winters served 18 months in prison for violating the 1939 Neutrality Act and breaking an embargo on weapons to Israel – an embargo the U.S. had in place during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Winters helped supply Israeli fighters with military planes, personally flying one of the three B-17 bombers he sold to Israeli forces across the Atlantic.
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