A person who loses their temper and does something terrible has done a bad act, and while that is serious, it is human, and it is the kind of thing that can sometimes be understood, even if it cannot be excused.

But a plan is different.

A plan means forethought.

It means sitting down, in calm and quiet, and designing another person’s ruin, choosing the moment and the prop and the story, arranging the pieces so that an innocent woman would be believed to be a thief.

That is not a loss of control.

It is control, exercised toward a cruel end.

And that distinction is not a small one when it comes to how we ought to feel about what happened.