Alan turing Pardoned for being homosexual

[SkullKing]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/w...the-Queen.html

I think tis terrible that this law ever existed in the first place, and I am sad that he is not alive to be pardoned. I have always been a fan of his work.

But I have a question due to the following phrase in the article:


"A royal pardon is rare, and usually only granted where a person has been found innocent of an offence and a request has been made by a family member.'

, is pardon´s purpose to overturn false convictions(i.e.:the person really was innocent) or to say "eh, fuck what the law says, he's an OK guy in my book" as someone else said. To say, ok he is a criminal, but he is such a good fellow that we will overlook it?

Because while I think the law was horrible, the law was there, and he did commit the "crime".

If the purpose was to say, this was a horrible law that should not ever have been made, they would have pardoned all those convicted by it.

[s_stabeler]

what a pardon is saying is basically " X has been punished enough, let him/her go", however, it's not uncommon to use it in certain cases to overturn a wrongful conviction- basically, in cases where somebody can't appeal for whatever reason, a Royal Pardon can overturn the conviction.

[SkullKing]

If it is about " X has been punished enough, let him/her go", than it is too little too late, why even bother?

It was not a wrongful conviction.

I think this pardon is just a publicity thing.

[s_stabeler]

It's more common to be while the person is still alive. In this case, it's closer to what happens when someone who has been executed is found to have been innocent all along. It IS too little, too late, but it is a recognition that Alan Turing was treated horrendously ( literally, most people thought he had been a coward for not being on the front-lines, and he couldn't legally correct them that he was a vital part of the war effort. Then he got convicted for being homosexual, which was a big thing in those days.)

[Greenday]

I think this pardon is just a publicity thing.

Well, it certainly wasn't to get him out of jail. It's basically a whole "Yea, we screwed up back then and are acknowledging that this was wrong."

[Rapscallion]

I'm in agreement than this was a stupid prosecution based on unjust laws that should never have been on the statute books.

However, these were the laws of the time. A pardon doesn't bring him back. A pardon for one isn't enough, and it doesn't do anything about the tens of thousands of other gay men convicted of the same. It also makes me wonder what we do about people who were executed back then for crimes that no longer carry the death penalty. Overturn one law retrospectively, what about the others that no longer apply?

It's a can of worms. I'm glad that this has begun, but quite frankly it's going to be a mess.

Rapscallion

[Hyena Dandy]

I see it as a symbolic gesture. It can't be fixed, but it's still an important symbol. It seems to me to be symbolically not merely saying the past was injust, but making a commitment to the future, as well. This isn't about the past, but also the future, and the choice of Alan Turing is because he's the most high-profile example. It's a publicity stunt, but sometimes that's a GOOD thing, so Alan Turing was chosen because "Issues pardon to tens of thousands of people" is probably a smaller headline than "Issues pardon to Alan Turing." Also, you don't need to have someone dig through for every person who was ever convicted, because that takes more time and money than a government should be spending on something that's essentially always going to be symbolic.

[Kelmon]

I find it rather pointless. We know that the laws back then were cruel and unjust, not just in Great Britain. This is nothing new.

The fact that "being gay" is no longer a crime should be enough acknowledgement of us now living in a more tolerant and accepting society.

If it is a gesture, either extend it to everyone persecuted under those laws, or to no-one. It should not matter whether you are one of the founders of a wonderful new area of technology or not. And as a gesture, it would have sufficed to issue a general, but informal apology, no need to go through the courts for a pardon for a particular dead person.

[HYHYBT]

It should at least be extended to anyone still alive.

[SkullKing]

I was told that if they extend the pardon to everyone, or everyone alive, the likelyhood that the still living people affected by the law would try to sue the government is big.

does anyone with an understanding of english law knows if that is true?

[Hyena Dandy]

But I think that another reason that only Turing was pardoned is the power of a story. As Stalin said, a million is a statistic. But Turing is well-known. His life-story is freely available. To pardon a lot of people, you're far less able to highlight the suffering, because the headline will be "Government pardons thousands of people." With Alan Turing, someone might be interested in just who this Alan TUring was, and once they have a name, they look it up and find the story.