TIGER RAG NEWS SERVICES
President Donald Trump posthumously pardoned LSU legend Billy Cannon on Friday for his involvement in a $6 million counterfeiting scheme in the early 1980s that resulted in him spending two-and-half years in prison.
At the time of Cannon’s arrest in 1983, the counterfeiting scheme, which involved five others who were charged, was considered one of the biggest in United States history.
Billy Cannon’s daughter, Bunnie Cannon, said Friday that the Cannon family is ecstatic over the news.
“That gives us some relief, knowing that someone can overlook the counterfeiting, and can overlook all of the negative publicity that’s come out about him,” Cannon said. “And they can look and see the whole person, and the humanity in him.”
Tiger Rag president Jim Engster wrote in a column eight years ago shortly after Cannon’s death, which was on May 20, 2018, at age 80, that President Trump should consider pardoning Cannon.
JIM ENGSTER ON BILLY CANNON’S LEGACY
And he has.
“President Trump should consider a pardon of Billy Cannon,” Engster wrote. “Nothing will remove his guilty plea and prison term, but Cannon was fully rehabilitated at the time of his death and deserves to be remembered for his greatness on the field and resilience away from the stadium.”
The 1959 Heisman Trophy winner took responsibility for the crime in which he produced fake $100 bills to pay back debt from bad real estate investments. Bunnie Cannon says her father never ran away from his mistakes.
FROM THE VAULT: BILLY CANNON’S LONG, LONG RUN IS AN EXCELLENT BOOK
“Whenever he did something wrong, he would own it and he taught us to do the same. And so I’m just glad that people are starting, are beginning to see the whole person that he was,” Cannon said.
He’s one of five former NFL players pardoned by President Trump for crimes they committed. The presidential pardon does not wipe away Cannon’s criminal record, but it grants forgiveness.
Bunnie Cannon says unfortunately there are people who like to bring up his counterfeiting conviction, but that should not define her father.
“Hopefully, we will be able to get his true story out in the way of a feature film and a documentary soon that we’re working on, and then people will see his whole life and how it came to be,” Cannon said.
After being released from a federal prison in Texarkana, Texas, in 1986, Cannon resumed his dental career in Baton Rouge. In 1995, he was hired as a dentist at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, and soon took over the entire department. Not only he did work on inmates’ teeth, but he also helped offenders reform.
The other four former NFL players granted clemency are Travis Henry, Joe Klecko, Jamal Lewis and Nate Newton.
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