New Canaan Police Chief Leon Krolikowski

New Canaan Police Chief Leon Krolikowski

Zucco

Zucco

Experts ponder moral vs. legal arguments with duty to rescue laws

Consider three scenarios:

Dozens of Facebook users watch a live stream of a girl being raped. A teenage boy lies unconscious on the floor surrounded by people at a house party. Bystanders walk by two men dragging an intoxicated woman down the street.

The common thread in the events besides all being true is that each had at least two witnesses. But the bystanders reacted differently in each incident.

In the last example, the people who witnessed a woman being led by two men down a Stamford street immediately called the police. The case, from 2014, led to the arrest of both men after police said they caught the pair raping the unconscious woman in a downtown apartment.

The partygoers who saw a 17-year-old boy lie unconscious in the second incident waited about 30 minutes before calling 911, according to police. The March 25 event happened in New Canaan, where police said the victim fell down a flight of stairs and hit his head, suffering a fractured skull and a concussion.

And more than 40 people watched the Facebook live rape - which occurred in Chicago - but not one alerted the police, who have charged at least two suspects in the March incident.

Although the inaction by the Facebook users and the partygoers raises ethical questions, bystanders of crimes or emergencies in almost any U.S. state have no obligation to report them under the law.

The general rule is that if a witness did not create or increase risk of harm to another, there is no legal duty to rescue.

Often we assume that theres a pretty good overlap between what the law requires and what most people think is the moral thing to do, said University of Connecticut law professor Sachin Pandya. This is one of the handful of areas of American court law where that is not the case.

In the New Canaan case, homeowner Douglas Knight was charged with interfering with an emergency call after authorities said he acted to prevent others at the party from calling 911.

The mans son, Andrew Knight, was charged with providing alcohol to minors and permitting minors to possess alcohol, but that case is closed and no one faces charges for failing to dial 911 when it was clear the boy was unconscious.

Ethically it would be ideal if everyone called and reported an emergency, New Canaan Police Chief Leon Krolikowski said. Its not smart to allow someones condition to deteriorate merely because your own self-interest is in jeopardy.

The chief, who also has a law degree, said its hard to tell whether criminalizing bystanders inaction would be the best solution.

If you contribute toward the injuries, if you caused the accident, you could be charged, he said. But if you just happened to be a bystander, theres no obligation to call or intervene.

There are exceptions in some states like Connecticut, including for a class of professionals who are legally required to help; those with a close connection to the victim; and cases where a bystander voluntarily begins helping the victim and then stops or doesnt succeed, Pandya said.

If youre passing someone who is drowning and you think you can easily save them, the right thing to do is to save them, Pandya said. But for various reasons, the law has been, for decades, extremely reluctant to hold someone legally responsible for not doing what we would all think is the moral thing to do.

Only a handful of states Massachusetts, Vermont, California and Hawaii penalize witnesses who fail to be Good Samaritans.

Massachusetts statutes, for instance, would punish witnesses to rape, murder, armed robbery or hazing incidents who were able to report the crimes without danger to themselves or others. Violators face a fines of between $500 and $2,500.

Even if Connecticut enacted such laws, its unclear whether prosecutors here would bring charges under those statutes or if witness behavior would change.

Its hard to know if its mostly a symbolic act or whether prosecutors would take it seriously, Pandya said. It might be appropriate to hold bystanders accountable for not doing more when they can.

But its hard for me to imagine that a bystander who is not already motivated by what they think is the moral thing to do will act differently just because the law is different.

Krolikowski doubts Connecticut will enact a duty to rescue statute anytime soon, especially because most people do the right thing. And he noted that every town has methods for reporting incidents anonymously.

More often than not, people do call 911, he said. Its a rarity that people dont do it.

Ivonne Zucco, executive director of the Stamford-based Center for Sexual Assault Crisis Counseling and Education, said victims are often among friends just moments before being raped.

There are other cases, she said, where someone is spotted slipping drugs into anothers drink at a party or a bar, but people in groups are less inclined to follow their instincts to get involved something known as the bystander effect.

Its a behavior highlighted by social scientists John Darley and Bibb Latan, whose work is still referenced by psychologists today. Their study showed that 10 percent of people in a group setting would report an emergency, compared with two-thirds when they were the lone witness.

Weve come to a point where everything is about rules and laws to manage human behavior, Zucco added. But the old values, when people seemed to think about one another, seem to be gone. As humans, these are things that we should be doing naturally.

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Experts ponder moral vs. legal arguments with duty to rescue laws - The Advocate