Criminal Stupidity

Robert Aragon, 55, isn't a murderer, says his cousin, Kenneth Quintana. "There's no way he could have known this was going to happen," he added.

"My dad, he's a good father," says Aragon's surviving adult daughter, Lorraine Aragon.

As Judge Mark Ingram explained second-degree murder and felony injury to a child charges, Aragon pounded a table with his head and said, "Oh, my God!" Upon hearing his bond was set at $500,000, he said, "I think that's way too high."

Quintana, who was riding with Aragon and his two children, Sage and Bear, when Aragon stuck the car in an Idaho snowdrift Christmas morning, defended his cousin Bob during a telephone interview with a reporter.

"He didn't send those kids out there to die. He just wanted their mother to spend Christmas with them."

Mr. Quintana, if I was the prosecutor, I would have filed the same charges against you. One doesn't have to be too smart to know poorly-dressed, 11 and 12-year-old children may suffer extreme frostbite or die from hypothermia when walking 10 miles in sub-freezing temperatures and snow drifts past their knees.

Aragon and Quintana must have never heard of two legal terms, the reasonable person standard and criminal negligence. That is one of the tasks of defense attorneys--explain legal terms to the criminally stupid.