It's not so much that they are financially valid, it's whether you consider the money to have been taken by the state, and that it should compensate you for the money it took, or if your money is being held by the state, and it should return it.

If you consider that it should compensate you for the money it took off you, then Colorado has a law on the books governing the compensation process, which Thomas (and the previous court - the Colorado Supreme Court) thinks you should follow.

The majority opinion seems to be that not quickly returning (and it considered it as returning rather than compensating) the innocent parties property offends their right to due process.

The entire premise of appellate courts (and by extension the Supreme Court) is that if the government does something wrong it should be reversed. Ignoring this fundamental truth seems completely insane.

It sounds like there is really no such thing as an overturned conviction. There is no constitutional right, apparently, to being "made whole" if your "conviction" is "overturned".

>There is no constitutional right, apparently, to being "made whole" if your "conviction" is "overturned".

Which in the general case is pretty clearly true. If someone is arrested and found not guilty, have their conviction overturned on appeal, etc. they're not in general entitled to payment for lost wages, legal costs, etc. It seems reasonable to consider this a different situation in that it involved a specific fine but I can at least see the counterargument that it's not.

I rarely agree with Thomas and certainly don't in this case. I find his rationale to be nonsensical.

OP didn't say they agreed with it. In fact they implied that they did not agree.