NEW ORLEANS — A Louisiana board has voted to posthumously pardon Homer Plessy, the namesake of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1896 "separate but equal" ruling affirming state segregation laws.

The state Board of Pardon voted unanimously on Friday to clear the Creole man's record of a conviction for refusing to leave a whites-only train car in New Orleans.

The decision now goes to Gov. John Bel Edwards, who has the final say over the pardon.

Plessy was arrested for a violation of the "Separate Car Act" in 1892. His case was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled his conviction constitutional four years later in the landmark case "Plessy v. Ferguson."

In issuing the court's opinion, Justice Henry Billings Brown wrote that segregation was legal if "separate but equal" accommodations were provided for Black people. The opinion allowed Jim Crow laws to stand throughout the country for half a century.

The statute was lifted in 1954 when the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. the Board of Education that racial segregation was inherently unequal.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday issued pardons and sentence commutations for 29 people, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law, in the latest burst of clemency in his final weeks at the White House.

The announcement, which included a pardon for Roger Stone, comes after Trump previously commuted Stone's prison sentence in July. Stone had been sentenced in February to three years and four months in prison for lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing the House investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election.

Trump has granted clemency through pardons or sentence commutations to 49 people in the last two days.

On Tuesday, he pardoned two people who were convicted in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russia, former members of Congress who were early supporters and former government contractors convicted in the killings of Iraqi civilians.

Video: President Trump saves pardons for personal, political allies

The pardons show the president's determination to use the power of his office in his final weeks to unravel the results of special counsel Mueller's investigation and to come to the aid of associates he feels were wrongly pursued.

Trump has now pardoned four people convicted in that investigation, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn and campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

Manafort had been sentenced to more than seven years in prison for financial crimes related to his work in Ukraine and was among the first people charged as part of Mueller's investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. He was released to home confinement last May because of coronavirus concerns in the federal prison system.

Manafort, in a tweet, thanked Trump and lavished praise on the outgoing president, declaring that history would show he had accomplished more than any of his predecessors.

Kushner is the father of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and a wealthy real estate executive who pleaded guilty years ago to tax evasion and making illegal campaign donations. Trump and the elder Kushner knew each other from real estate circles and their children were married in 2009.

TAMPA, Fla. — New evidence has been sent to the outgoing Trump administration for their consideration when deciding whether to grant a pardon to Joe Exotic — the imprisoned former zoo owner and made famous last year by Netflix docuseries "Tiger King."

People close to the reality TV star — who was convicted in a murder-for-hire plot and several violations of the endangered species act — say that his legal team has obtained audiotapes they hope will free Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage.

The case of Joe Exotic got widespread attention in early 2020 when Netflix released "Tiger King": the salacious story of how Exotic and his Oklahoma zoo went to war with Carole Baskin, the owner of a Big Cat Sanctuary in Tampa, Florida.

“Maldonado had made his threats online over a period of years,” Baskin said after Joe Exotic's arrest.

“There are a lot of crazy characters. A lot of twists and turns. And just when you think you can’t get any more strange it does,” retired U.S. Secret Service Agent Jim Rathmann said.

Rathmann teamed up with television producer Theresa McKeown to investigate Exotic's case.

“There’s so much more information that’s going to come out over time. There’s so much, it’s overwhelming,” McKeown said. “When I saw that article last night that Trump has 100 people he’s gonna pardon, I’m thinking Joe’s probably one of them. Or so I hope.”

“There are 257 pages for the pardon. That’s made it up to its way to the White House. But what they’ve gotten recently is this new evidence,” Rathmann said.

Rathmann, now a private investigator, first talked to Joe Exotic last year when the Investigation Discovery Network hired him to look into the case of Baskin's missing husband, Don Lewis.

McKeown, a former Inside Edition producer, met Joe Exotic in 2014 when he pitched a reality show.

“He was such a live wire and he was at war with PETA at the time, so none of the networks really wanted anything to do with it,” she said.

In recent months, McKeown and Rathmann have helped uncover what they say are issues with Joe Exotic's original trial that could be used in his pardon application and appeal.

Adam Walser

“You find your evidence and you let the evidence take you wherever the case is going to take you. And in this particular case keeps bringing me down the path that this murder-for-hire never happened,” Rathmann said.

Rathmann and McKeown were recently contacted by former Indiana zoo owner Tim Stark, who knows most of the people in the Tiger King.

Stark, who faces multiple criminal charges in Indiana related to the operation of his zoo, provided Rathmann and McKeown with tapes of phone conversations he believes calls into question the testimony of some witnesses.

Stark confirmed that he recorded the phone calls, the nature of the contents and that he provided them to Rathmann and McKeown.

“It’s pretty explosive, in my opinion. I’m not an attorney, but I’m looking at that going ‘Oh my God!’” McKeown said.

They say recordings were rushed to the White House as part of the pardon application. Rathmann says they will also be used by Joe Exotic’s attorneys in an upcoming appeal.

“I would have loved this information to have been out two years ago before his trial so he never would have been convicted overall. But since that isn’t what happened, it’s better late than never. And in this particular case, he has an appeal. He has oral arguments that are coming up on the 20, which is also the same day as the inauguration,” Rathmann said.

This story was originally published by Adam Wasler on WFTS in Tampa, Florida.

There's now a request to pardon George Floyd for a charge he faced in Texas.

Floyd, who was murdered almost a year ago in Minnesota, was arrested in Texas in 2004 on a drug charge.

However, the officer who arrested him is now charged with two counts of murder for a deadly drug raid he took part in back in 2019. The officer has been fired.

Since then, more than 160 drug convictions tied to the former officer have been dismissed.

It's unclear when or if the Floyd pardon will be approved.

The final signature would have to come from Gov. Greg Abbott.