> People can't imagine that criminals might have had some understandable train of thought prior to committing a crime; or worse that they may have done exactly

> People can't imagine that criminals might have had some understandable train of thought prior to committing a crime; or worse that they may have done exactly the same thing in their shoes. People can imagine this. They understand it. They just implicitly recognize that humans are rationalization machines, that their reasons don't matter. Every single person in human history, no matter how abhorrent, had their reasons, had a whole litany of reasons that they could recite. Plenty of them were able to convince other people they were right, too. That's how you get everything from mass surveillance to genocides. Now, it's part of being human that we recognize that in extraordinary circumstances, maybe those exigencies can justify or ameliorate your wrongs. But every single person in human history is going to be able to explain to you why that applies to their case, that they had to do it. But the fact remains nearly all of them didn't.