New Call For Turing Pardon 231
mikejuk writes "As 2012, Alan Turing Year, draws to close a group of highly regarded UK scientists, including Professor Stephen Hawking, have repeated the call for a posthumous pardon for Turing's criminal conviction in a letter to the Telegraph. The letter has re-opened the debate, which is controversial even for those who support the idea that Turing was treated in an unfair and appalling way, was formally acknowledged by the UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2009 when he apologized for the treatment Turing had received. In February Justice Minister Lord McNally rebuffed a 23,000 signature petition for a pardon saying: 'A posthumous pardon was not considered appropriate as Alan Turing was properly convicted of what at the time was a criminal offense.'"
Re:Ill second your Godwining motion.... (Score:0, Informative)
Jews were typically declared "enemies of the State" by the Nazis, allowing for their persecution. The reality was that it was the State which was the "enemy of the Jews."
Re:He doesn't need a pardon . . . (Score:4, Informative)
Though the rest of your post was rather insightful, this is wild hyperbole, unless you are playing this game only with a particularly lawless set of individuals.
Well you don't have to take my word for it. How about a public defender [youtube.com] in California who now teaches at Harvard Law and a career detective with 20 years under his belt? This was the video that inspired the game I play, precisely because so many people think like you do.
People like you are in fact so resistant to the idea that they can easily be a criminal too, just like the ones they shun and look at disgust at on TV, that I put my money where my mouth was. $500 seems the magic number for people to give their belief about this aspect of the legal system a spin on the wheel as it were. And it's a real contest, make no mistake man. I take all the footage and logs of what they've done and ask a real and licensed public defender in my state to look over my work and tell me whether it would be actionable or not. A lot of times, I get the interpretation wrong, but never once have I failed to walk out of their offices with a yes vote.