BRITAIN: Family Of Alan Turing To Demand Pardon For 49,000 Other Men

[Potoooooooo]

http://www.theguardian.com/science/...etition-pardons-gross-indecency-homosexuality

The family of the codebreaker Alan Turing will visit Downing Street on Monday to demand the government pardons 49,000 other men persecuted like him for their homosexuality. Turing, whose work cracking the German military codes was vital to the British war effort against Nazi Germany, was convicted in 1952 of gross indecency with a 19-year-old man, was chemically castrated, and two years later died from cyanide poisoning in an apparent suicide. He was given a posthumous royal pardon in 2013 and campaigners want the government to pardon all the men convicted under the outdated law. Turing’s great-nephew, Nevil Hunt, his great-niece, Rachel Barnes, and her son, Thomas, will hand over the petition, which attracted almost 500,000 signatures, to 10 Downing Street. Ms Barnes said: “I consider it to be fair and just that everybody who was convicted under the Gross Indecency law is given a pardon. It is illogical that my great uncle has been the only one to be pardoned when so many were convicted of the same crime. I feel sure that Alan Turing would have also wanted justice for everybody.”

 

[none]

This is all news to me, maybe they will extend the pardon to everyone.
I can't think of a reasonable argument not to do it.

 

[Bomb#20]

This is all news to me, maybe they will extend the pardon to everyone.
I can't think of a reasonable argument not to do it.

A pardon is the government forgiving a criminal. The people who were prosecuted for Gross Indecency aren't criminals and it's the government that should be asking for forgiveness.

If this were the U.S., there's also the point that accepting a pardon has been held by the Supreme Court to be an admission of guilt. So a more appropriate correction would be to have the law declared unconstitutional and all convictions under it retroactively overturned. I don't know if pardons have the same implications under British law; but there's a concept in British law of a "disregarded conviction" that might be a more appropriate remedy.

 

[Juma]

accepting a pardon has been held by the Supreme Court to be an admission of guilt.

Really? Do you have a link or something?

 

[Keith&Co.]

accepting a pardon has been held by the Supreme Court to be an admission of guilt.

Really? Do you have a link or something?

Burdick v. United States, 236 U.S. 79 (1915),[1] was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that:

A pardoned man must introduce the pardon into court proceedings, otherwise the pardon must be disregarded by the court.
To do this, the pardoned man must accept the pardon. If a pardon is rejected, it cannot be forced upon its subject.
A pardon carries an "imputation of guilt", and accepting a pardon is "an admission of guilt".

So in this case, a pardon would impute (and acceptors would admit that) the homosexuals were, in fact, homosexuals a tthe time they were prosecuted for homosexuality. The two gay men i know would both accept the pardon and thank the government for 'the recognition.'

I'm not sure if the 'admission of guilt' implies an agreement that the law they were prosecuted under was correct....

 

[Juma]

Burdick v. United States, 236 U.S. 79 (1915),[1] was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that:

A pardoned man must introduce the pardon into court proceedings, otherwise the pardon must be disregarded by the court.
To do this, the pardoned man must accept the pardon. If a pardon is rejected, it cannot be forced upon its subject.
A pardon carries an "imputation of guilt", and accepting a pardon is "an admission of guilt".

This is so fucked... US is so bloody moral about everything. Law is not about guilt, it is about managing order.

 

[Bullmoose Too]

chemically castrated. That sounds unpleasant.

This is so fucked... US is so bloody moral about everything. Law is not about guilt, it is about managing order.

Yeah.