Well, he also lied to police, substantiated with lie with false documents, and this resulted in someone ending up forcibly medicated and imprisoned for an extended time.

He knew the guy was going to trial and his comfortable life was more valuable to him than honesty or this other man's existence.

There should never be anything wrong with lying to the police... They're allowed to lie to you.

In the article's situation it was causing ongoing harm to another person so this is still pretty bad though

I always found it so weird that in some legal systems defendant can't lie or interrogation is not very strict process where only final statement is signed...

I'm with you on lying to the police.

But note that, according to the article, lying to the police was viewed as a minor crime. The major one was giving his bank a false name. The bank isn't even, notionally, an arm of the state.

Different guy...

Ah, it was unclear to me whether we'd reverted to talk about the article, but the duplication of 19 years answers that.

In any case, I guess-- it's complicated. We have this guy who was seemingly a different person for nearly 35 years, but then reverted to do something terrible (and similar to things he had done in the past) when it all threatened to come crashing down. And the other guy who was someone different for 19 years.

It's not the stolen identity that's the issue - it's the real person who actually has that identity.

If he had stolen an identity from someone dead we'd probably all just kinda shrug.

For 19 years he continuously committed a crime against another guy and when given the chance to have the other chap incarcerated he proceeded with it. You guys are all very kind with other people's lives, but if Google cancels one app you use it's suddenly thunder and brimstone and how you will never use Google again what a horrific thing. Give me a break. I can almost guarantee that, should I look in your profile history, you'll be holding some position about someone or some organization long after they acted in some manner you found unacceptable.

I'm all for forgiving people, but the guy was actively committing the crime against the other chap!

People do not change. In my opinion, people are driven by circumstance. Middle-class is relatively calm and peaceful because that's their circumstance. Of course, if you are part of one you'd claim otherwise in some process of self-insulation and protection.

Remove all entitlements, money and credentials from a middle-class person and throw them on the street and see how quickly that goes down.

> People do not change. In my opinion, people are driven by circumstance.

You contradicted yourself here.

They are saying that people act (yield output) in function of their input (circumstances), but that this function itself doesn’t change: The same input will always yield the same output, for a given person.

(I’m not agreeing, just pointing out that there is no contradiction.)

Yes. If you define people as a mathematical function that works. Good point.