Quashing Criminal Convictions !

What is the status of a criminal conviction when the law under which it was prosecuted has been repealed ?     That is a querie that would have most of the legal minds in this country struggling for answers.

Unfortunately the stain of convictions for homosexual acts between consenting adults remain on the records and years later are barriers to jobs and travel.  Such a conviction comes back to haunt those applying for a visa to visit many countries and they certainly do not help when a job resume is subjected to verification research - and an old conviction emerges.

Thirty years ago homosexuality was still a crime in most Australian states and it was decriminalized in Victoria in 1981 and New South Wales in 1984.   Now a private members bill is before the New South Wales parliament to have these records expunged.  It raises the question of what should happen  automatically to convictions that are no longer a crime because of a law change ?

Perhaps the disgrace inflicted on a British man credited with both a major coup that helped win the second world war and the theory that led to the development of the computer illustrates this point.  Alan Turing was a genius in the field of mathematics - and he was also gay.   He was recruited by the famous British code breakers of Bletchley Park and tasked with breaking Germany's "Enigma "code, so complex that even after the war many German generals refused to believe that it had been compromised.

Turing quickly ascertained that the human mind could not make the calculations needed to crack the code and began to search for a mechanical way of achieving multi calculations at high speed.  In essence, he developed a crude version of what later became the computer - and it solved the problem.

Unfortunately his sexual orientation became known to the police and he was arrested, put before a very unsympathetic magistrate - and offered a choice.   Gaol - or chemical castration.  He chose the latter, but the disgrace and being barred from further security work finally led to suicide.   Now the British government has cleared his name and belatedly showered him with the honours his valuable contributions deserved.

The complexity of the law begs this question to be answered.  If a crime is no longer a crime, how can ongoing punishment still be legal ?     The record of a past punishment is still in force if it's presence is still causing lifestyle limitations or blackening the reputation of the person in question. Many times the average person will be faced with the question  "Do you have any convictions ? " when making an application or swearing to provide a truthful answer to a statutory authority.  If the law has changed, surely the status of such a conviction changes with it ?

It will be interesting to see how this bill is applied if it passes into law, and that will depend on the wording and the intent.  It may simply apply to previous convictions for homosexuality, but many would welcome a wider interpretation to allow a person convicted of any statute that has since been repealed to apply to have that conviction struck off the record.

Anything less seems to be justice denied !