In fiction, we have Javert hounding Jean Valjean for his whole life, all over the theft of a loaf of bread, the great literature of "Les Miserables." In real life, we have this:
It's the lore of the North that allows a traveller caught in a blizzard to break into a cabin for food and warmth in order to keep body and soul together.
But what about breaking into an expensive condo just before Christmas, ripping open all the presents hoping to find chocolates, raiding the fridge and cupboards and pigging out on cups of tea, chilli, cream cheese and tortillas before slipping into a stupor and passing out?
Jim Nelson, 49, a homeless man who had been living in a tent in the forest outside Whistler since 2002, admitted to doing all that but argued in North Vancouver Provincial Court that he was forced to commit the crime in order to save himself from dying of cold and hunger.
Read the whole thing. If you can figure out why the judge acquitted him, I salute you.
