"His kindness is not something you should forget." Hannibal agreed. What John Coffey had done for River was something that even the most advanced medical technology had not been able to do. He had fixed her as best that he could. Given her a chance to be more of a normal girl than she had been able to be since idiot scientists had interfered with her brain. Hannibal would be ever thankful to the man.
"The City may not be keeping you from anything like that. You must consider the things it does just because it wants to see what we will do in reaction. It did not send us Godzilla or King Kong to harm us. It did not create a Cupid because it did not want us to be with the people we were already with. These are all things that it does due to curiosity. It goes back to it not understanding us. These are the ways that it learns. Perhaps removing your ability to hear the thoughts of another is not a punishment, but an ill conceived gift. Perhaps there is no intended positive or negative at all, and it just wanted to see how you and those around you would react to the change."