What a mess!

Alan Turing in the news again (see posts of 12/9/09 and 6/3/12) as a result of him being granted a royal pardon.  Very unusual - I think this is only the fourth time such a pardon has been granted in the last hundred years.  So that's it then - case closed?  Well perhaps not.  Firstly there seems to be some confusion as to whether such a pardon wipes out the original conviction or not.  I thought it did, but the general view seems to be that it does not - he remains a convicted criminal, albeit a pardoned one. And then there is the matter of all the other men who were convicted of homosexual activity back then - what about them? Is Turing being pardoned simply because of his invaluable wartime work, rather than the despicable way he was treated by the law - which of course applied to so many others. Not easy, is it?