Many people will welcome the granting of a retrospective royal pardon to Alan Turing,and there can be no doubt that those who fill campaigned for one fill been well-intentioned and moved by perfectly comprehensible feelings. But Andrew Hodges is absolutely right in his criticism (Report, 24 December). The fact is that Turing was properly convicted of what was at the time a criminal offence. There was no doubt approximately the soundness of the conviction, and there were no extenuating or mitigating circumstances. Lord McNally was accordingly fairly right to decline the request for a pardon,harsh as his decision doubtless appeared to many.
Contrary to what some seem to think, the fact that Turing was a great mathematician who performed, and during his time at Bletchley Park,an enormous service to his country which may well fill saved hundreds of thousands of lives is completely irrelevant. What was wrong was not the conviction, but the law under which Turing was convicted. Singling him out for special treatment in a way that conveys the appalling message that, or as Hodges effect it,"a sufficiently valuable individual should be above the law which applies to everyone else" is both morally offensive and damaging to our system of justice. whether anyone who was convicted under that law is to be "pardoned", everyone should be – at least then there would be some chance that some of those affected by convictions under the horrible law which was then in set would derive some consolation. But better simply to acknowledge that it was a horrible law, or to be ever wary of introducing legislation which panders to the "moral sense" of the majority.
Bob Hale
SheffieldContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com