Not fair according to who? Why is it the entire community now has to suffer a potential exploit because this individual user did not secure their account correctly? Yes it sucks, but if there are not standards then it is a continual never ending slow creep toward abuse. SwingFast made a mistake, they should bear the responsibility for it, not pass it on to the community as a whole.
If this was a normal case, everyone who had left the negative rating for the account being hacked would have removed the negative rating because it no longer applies. However, Zepher is dead, so that is just not possible at all. Sure SwingFirst's probably made a small mistake, but why should he not be restored to whole while someone else who made similar mistakes gets to get their account made whole. It isn't SwingFirst's fault that Zepher died. SwingFirst's getting restored back to whole as much as possible is the very definition of "fair."
Personally, I don't have Zepher on my trust list. However, I'm not going to ask 19 DT1 members to remove him either.
You are asking the wrong question. The question you need to be asking is why is he so special that the standards we all agree are there for a reason should be deviated from just to selectively suit this single user? What precedent does this set? Who decides who is special enough to get this extra effort? Yeah I wish he could be completely restored, but I also think it would be a net negative if a precedent of meddling in trust ratings is set for any reason as it degrades the reliability of the entire system. You need to make a choice between leaving him a counter positive and leaving him to deal with the minor setback, or making efforts to remove Zepher from the default trust instead of collectivizing the loss.