Repeat the Behavior or Learn from the Experience and Break the Chain?

It is interesting to observe people who have had something negatively happen to them, will often do the same exact thing to someone else. We often see this repeating chain of events with people who were abused as children, and then they also become abusers themselves. But it also happens with other behaviors, too. Such as in this story of Trisha Yearwood's ancestor from the show, "Who Do You Think You Are?"

In this show, we learn that one of her great-great-great grandfathers (Samuel) was extremely poor in England. He was orphaned, starving, and one of the "have-nots". The English records in 1776 indicate Samuel and his brother were caught poaching deer from one of the wealthy landowners, and the punishment for this offense was death. But because the American colonies needed cheap labor, the King redirected the sentence of some 10,000 criminals, and shipped them in shackles to the America's with a sentence of being an indentured servant for 14 years. 

We later learn that Samuel some how ends up becoming a wealthy landowner, and the records once again show Samuel in court, but this time he is the one who has been robbed of 4 of cows, calves, and some bacon, stolen by the Indians, who may have also been starving.

 

It makes me wonder if Samuel saw this event as an opportunity for him to change the sentencing outcome of these Indians, who may have also been starving? Or if he saw how the laws were now in his favor because he was a wealthy landowner?