
UK government declines to pardon Alan Turing - jgrahamc
http://blog.jgc.org/2012/02/uk-government-declines-to-pardon-alan.html
======
protothomas
Whilst my gut reaction would be that this is the wrong decision, this -
"However, the law at the time required a prosecution and, as such, long-
standing policy has been to accept that such convictions took place and,
rather than trying to alter the historical context and to put right what
cannot be put right, ensure instead that we never again return to those
times." - is actually a rational and convincing response.

~~~
kleiba
During the Nazi regime in Germany, lots of people were sentenced to death
under a jurisdiction that today is considered inhumane and criminal (and was
by other nations at the time, too). I'm not convinced by the whole "...but it
was the law at that time!" rationale.

(That said, and before anyone unfairly cites Godwin's law, I'm of course _not_
saying that the current British government compares in any way to the Nazi
dictatorship.)

~~~
protothomas
I think the point that the government is making here is not "...but it was the
law at that time!" but rather "we will let our mistakes of the past stand, and
rather than hide from them we will learn from them". There is perhaps the
danger that by 'fixing' the past you can then forget about it.

~~~
electromagnetic
Agreed. There's been many atrocious things done in the past by almost every
country, and it would be very simple to whitewash everything out of existence
with pardons, however it doesn't change what happened or what resulted from
it.

It's better to stand by your mistakes than to pretend they never happened.

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
It would not be, in any sense, a "whitewash", actually the reverse. A
whitewash covers up mistakes. This would be an acknowledgement that the laws
of the time were injust.

~~~
robertskmiles
We have had an unequivocal apology, made on national television by the Prime
Minister himself, saying that the conviction was "horrifying" and "utterly
unfair". I think that counts as "an acknowledgement that the laws of the time
were injust".

A pardon is a separate and distinct _legal_ action, which is unwarranted.

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
Sure. But warranted or unwarranted, it's anything but a whitewash.

~~~
electromagnetic
It is a whitewash. The treatment of the homosexual community at that time was
horrendous. Pardoning his act because it's non-objectional today is stupid.
Why not pardon all the Jews of the pogroms for having the wrong ethnicity.

It's whitewashing because the act of doing it is more offensive than simply
leaving it as is. Pardoning Turing would be pardoning him for being gay and
makes no correction for the horrendous treatment he received, which was the
point of the apology.

An apology is what Turing deserved. A pardon is an insult to his memory.

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
I'm sorry, but you simply don't understand the meaning of the word "whitewash"
<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/whitewash>. You don't "whitewash"
something by publicly apologizing for it or by pardoning someone who has been
wronged. That's almost exactly the opposite of what the word "whitewash"
actually means. When you "whitewash" something you DENY that it happened or
try and BURY it.

------
droithomme
That's extremely interesting. Turing is dead and can't accept an apology, so
an apology is completely useless. But a pardon actually clears his name. Given
the reasoning "The conviction was correct", it makes the apology hollow even
if he was still alive.

At this point in history, an apology and pardon would slightly _clear the name
of the Crown_ from a legacy as a bigoted hateful illegitimate government that
tramples on rights and whose amoral so-called "laws" tortured a good man until
he gave in to suicide.

By refusing to do so, the Crown can not harm Turing whose legacy is assured by
history. They only harm themselves, and quite frankly, it is their choice to
do so.

It is Turing whose pardon _they_ must secure. Not vice versa. As he is
deceased, that opportunity is past and their crimes remain both unforgiven and
unforgivable.

~~~
TWAndrews
"an apology and pardon would slightly clear the name of the Crown."

I think is is the same reason that they declined to issue the pardon. The
ministers didn't feel it was appropriate to try and retroactively whitewash
the actions of the crown and that it should continue to bear a stain for those
actions.

~~~
droithomme
Thanks, that's very interesting. If so, then it's a reasonable and almost
noble acceptance of responsibility.

------
gioele
It is interesting to note how the main point behind the resolution _not to
pardon_ Turing is exactly the same point that, in other legislations, is used
_to pardon_ people sentenced under no-longer-actual laws.

Italian case (also present in many other civil law jurisdictions): you are
sentenced in 2012 for sharing a music file. You are fined and jailed because
so says the law in 2012. 2020, an act is passed that says that sharing a music
file is no longer felony. fifteen days after the day that act has been enacted
you can go to a court and say "ehi, I was just ahead of the time, clean my
criminal records" and you will instantly get your records cleaned with a "il
fatto non è previsto dalla legge come reato" sentence ("because that actions
is no longer seen as a criminal offence under the current law"). In some rare
cases you can also get money back from the state.

In the recent times this principle has been used to provide blanket pardon for
things that once were felonies such as having or providing an abort, divorcing
(abroad), opposing to draft, hiding jews from the police... You know, these
things that change over time.

~~~
feralchimp
To a U.S. observer, the U.K. (or maybe just the monarchy?) has a very peculiar
notion of what "pardoning" (even ceremonially) means, or is meant to
accomplish.

In the U.S., many (Presidential) pardons are used for crimes that everyone
agrees were indeed committed, and even crimes for which we fully intend to
continue prosecuting other people in the future!

~~~
arctangent
The UK concept of a pardon is the same as yours. Historically it was used in
much the same way as your Presidential pardons are (i.e. to get friends of the
ruling elite out of prison or spare them the gallows).

In modern times we've pardoned people who we consider to be wrongly executed
(including all soldiers executed for cowardice in the First World War) and
people who have been wrongly executed for other crimes.

However, there is still a general principle that a pardon doesn't remove the
original conviction but instead removes the punishment that was applied. So in
the case of a miscarriage of justice there is a tendency to allow the
conviction to be quashed by an appeal court rather than pardon someone (unless
time is of the essence e.g. they are close to death and the appeal would take
too long).

~~~
droithomme
This is getting really interesting.

Pardons are indeed based on the idea of forgiveness. So, to issue a pardon
would be to say that the person committed a crime and needed to be forgiven.
Thus, it is possible a pardon may be inappropriate as it would send the wrong
message.

It sounds like Italy has a different concept available, where things no longer
considered crimes are no longer considered crimes, rather than sins that must
be forgiven. I wonder if the same sort of principle is possible at all under
English law.

~~~
arctangent
Laws which retroactively criminalise behaviour are expressly forbidden under
Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights [1] but merely _ex post
facto_ law (which may presumably make something legal retroactively) is merely
"frowned upon" in the UK [2], because the doctrine of parliamentary
sovereignty (i.e. parliament can do what it likes) takes precedence.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_7_of_the_European_Conve...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_7_of_the_European_Convention_on_Human_Rights)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law#United_Kingdo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law#United_Kingdom)

------
rmc
It's interesting to read the author's reasoning on why they don't support a
pardon ( [http://blog.jgc.org/2011/11/why-im-not-supporting-
campaign-f...](http://blog.jgc.org/2011/11/why-im-not-supporting-campaign-
for.html) )

One reason is that there are other people, not just Alan Turing, who were
convicted under this law, and are still living. They had a criminal record.
However a new Act essentially deletes the criminal conviction for that part,
so those people no longer have a criminal record.

~~~
DanBC
Under Rehabilitation of Offenders act do those criminal convictions (surely
'spent' now) have any affect?

Do they make it harder for people to travel to, eg, US ("Moral Turpitude" on
visa waiver)? Do they count for job applications?

Certainly many people had their lives destroyed, and lived in fear. Ignorance
and bigotry isn't dead either.

------
mseebach
A deeper problem with pardoning a man who's been dead for almost 60 years is
that it's a wholly empty gesture. It lets various campaigners grandstandingly
"champion" a cause that everyone is behind, without getting their fingers
dirty in actual politics. There are plenty of issues to get into if you want
to champion gay rights - unfortunately, most of them requires you to take a
position that will have people on the other side of it. Ick.

It's the same deal with being anti-nazi. Yeah, big deal, >99% of the worlds
population has been with you for 70 years.

------
bwarp
It makes me wonder who they'll be pardoning in 50 years time from now.
Assange, Manning, David Kelly, McKinnon etc.

There's no excuse to get it wrong in the first place and I'm sure for the
people concerned, a pardon is probably virtually irrelevant by the time they
have issued it. Either the people are dead or their life is wrecked.

~~~
mooism2
They can't pardon David Kelly. He wasn't ever charged with anything, much less
convicted, was he?

~~~
bwarp
Not every part of the government operates under the same rules as us. If they
don't want someone around, they bully them to suicide or kill them (opinions
are open as to what happened there). Then they run a public inquiry,
ironically headed by school chums of the ruling class to shut people up about
it.

~~~
hahaiamatwork
This isn't a conspiracy theory site. For the sake of polite conversation this
isn't the place to start making such claims.

~~~
JeremyBanks
Previous discussion on this subject (two years ago):
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1073405>

------
arctangent
While I think that Turing's prosecution was absurd and inhumane, I'm not sure
it's an easy step to conclude that he should be retroactively pardoned now
that the relevant laws have changed.

To do so would be to accept that there is no definitive law at any present
moment, and run the risk that individuals could be convicted in the future for
activities which were perfectly legal at the time. This could have dire
implications for both justice and personal liberty.

~~~
roguecoder
Your conclusion does not hold: making something retroactively legal is vastly
different than making something retroactively illegal. The first happens all
the time and is the entire point of a full pardon. In the US the latter is
unconstitutional and the former explicitly constitutional.

Besides which, your approach assumes the law that allows for chemical
castration because he was gay was a legitimate application of state power. I
maintain that it was not.

~~~
burgerbrain
Exactly. The law in any sufficiently just system is always asymmetric with
respect to guilt and innocence, in innocence's favour. Retroactive action
should be no difference.

------
ck2
Um, no, you pardon everyone under a wrong law as well as declare the law
immoral and invalid.

Let society carry the black eye, not the victim.

------
tomjen3
That is the most insane reason I have ever heard for not pardoning somebody.

Especially since they did pardon the soldiers who were shot for cowardice
during WWI (admitably a little too late to do anything by about 90 years).

------
smiler
I personally don't like all these campaigns which must take up an inordinate
amount of time, energy, effort and money to try and somehow right the wrongs
of past governments.

I really don't get why a country 'apologises' for past actions - I don't feel
any tie whatsoever to the government / laws of the time / my fellow countrymen
of years gone by and why me apologising would make any difference

Let people be responsible for their own actions and decisions.

------
antonp
Here's a link to the excellent documentary "Britain's greatest codebreaker"
that tells Alan Turing's story. <http://documentaryheaven.com/britains-
greatest-codebreaker/>

------
SeanDav
Alan Turing is one of my hero's. His conviction was from an earlier, less
enlightened time and is a prime example of political expediency over common
sense.

The headline is slightly sensationalist because as the article points out, he
was given a full, unreserved apology by the British Government in 2009.

~~~
sambeau
While they may have called it 'unreserved', the apology remained reserved in
an important part: there was _no_ pardon. 'Disregarding of convictions' is not
the same thing as a pardon, it is what it says it is: it is, simply, 'we will
no longer take these convictions into account' (and a db admin gets to run a
very rare delete command).

A pardon would be recognition that the conviction was in itself wrong, even at
the time (the paragraph of law that made sex between men was snuck into a bill
of 1885 which dealt with sex crimes relating to young women. It took nearly 75
years to remove).

Even if it is impractical to pardon everyone, pardoning Turing would have made
a very public statement alongside the 'Disregarding of convictions'.

I believe the statement would still be worth making and I would go further to
include a few others, e.g. Oscar Wilde.

Note also that the bill specifically holds a paragraph to make exactly this
kind of pardon possible:

    
    
      87 Saving for Royal pardons etc.
    
      Nothing in section 86 affects any right of Her Majesty, by 
      virtue of Her Royal prerogative or otherwise, to grant a 
      free pardon, to quash any conviction or sentence, or to 
      commute any sentence.
    

[http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmbills/14...](http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmbills/146/11146.68-74.html)

------
nirvana
Since the issue at hand involves Turing's homosexuality, there is a tendency
to see it in terms of bigotry. But it is not. The real issue is one of
morality. The governments persecution of Turing, and other homosexuals, is
immoral, because their acts did not harm anyone, and were consensual in
nature. However, the governments acts did cause harm and were non-consentual.
(Turing didn't consent to be prosecuted, he didn't have a choice.)

The law is not the definer of morality. The law is subject of morality, much
in the same way as US laws are subject to the constitution, which is itself
also subject to morality.

Thus the persecution of Alan Turing was itself a criminal act, in the eyes of
anyone who accept morality (or at least the moral premise that consensual acts
among adults that do not harm anyone are moral.)

The failure to pardon him -- that is, the failure to renounce the crime the
government committed in the past-- shows the government to have as little
regard for morality today as it did then.

This is confirmed by the manifold laws currently in place in that government
that persecute people for "crimes" that are not immoral.

For example, the criminalization of drug use.

The thing that trips people up is that they're taught to believe that
government is moral. Government is a collection of people, which engages in
acts some of which are moral and some of which are immoral.

Since the law in question was immoral, thus enforcing it is a moral crime, and
the governments failure to renounce such enforcement via issuing a pardon (and
to be honest, paying some appropriate sum to the estate of the man in
compensation, with interest) shows the government to be immoral to this day.

If it were a moral government, it would act morally, and remove the conviction
while paying compensation for the crime.

And it would do so for every person prosecuted under this law.

~~~
nkassis
Morality changes with time. The laws have been changed to reflect. The UK
government is saying that they can't pardon something that at the time was a
crime and was prosecuted properly. I don't see that as immoral even if I find
the past law immoral.

The are many things considered morally wrong by enough people to make them
illegal. Assisted Suicide is an example. If it ever becomes legal, should
everyone who was arrested and convicted under the current laws be pardoned?
many people today would find that immoral.

Edit: Some in other threads have a raised another good point, what about
things that are now considered crimes? Should we retroactively prosecute these
people?

------
shareme
Even Martin Luther was pardoned after death ..oh come on now..

~~~
peteretep
Martin Luther founded the movement that led to the modern British church as we
know it, so I'm not sure what you think the UK government convicted him of?

In the case that you're confusing Martin Luther, and Martin Luther King, MLK
was also not convicted by the British government of anything, and as this is a
British government policy, I'm a little curious as to what relevance you feel
this has on the discussion at hand...

~~~
mjwalshe
I think that was Henry VIII that set up the COE

~~~
peteretep
It's more complicated than that, but you could do worse than start with:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Reformation>

------
Tooluka
Governments are just scared to even slightly question their own actions. If
some laws from 1952 were inhuman and oppressive, then what chance of some of
the current laws being the same? No way they are going to diminish their
power. Never.

~~~
mooism2
Then why did the government posthumously apologise to Turing, describing his
treatment as "horrifying" and "utterly unfair"?

