Bystanders should be legally obliged to help people in potentially life-threatening situations, a lawyer has told SBS's Insight.
Lawyer John Hammond is pushing for 'duty of rescue' laws to be implemented in Western Australia if the situation involves an “easy rescue” and doesn't put the bystander in harm's way.
“It's what I would term an easy rescue,” he says. “So if someone's, for example, drowning at the edge of a jetty and you have a rope you don't just turn your back and walk.”
'Duty to rescue' is a concept in law where someone can be held liable for failing to come to the rescue of someone who is in peril.
Mr Hammond represented Linda Jesser in a criminal compensation case against two bystanders who left her husband, Grant Charles Jesser, to die.
Mr Jesser was assaulted and left bleeding heavily in a laneway outside a pub in Kalgoorlie. Instead of calling for help, two passers-by Jake Amin Giles and Joshua Mark Nevison took his wallet and filmed him on their phones.
Mr Jesser eventually died in the laneway. Meanwhile, Mr Giles and Mr Nevision received suspended sentences for robbing him and were not able to be charged with anything else.
Mrs Jesser has since called for a duty to rescue law to be implemented in Western Australia.
“My husband was left to die like a dog in a laneway,” she tells Insight. “I don't mean that people should put their lives in danger. What does it take to make a call to the emergency services? One phone call, walk away. That's all I ask.”
There are currently no duty to rescue laws in Australia except in the Northern Territory.
Ethicist and psychologist Elizabeth Shaw says that the implementation of duty to rescue laws could be problematic because of the 'bystander effect' – a psychological phenomenon whereby if there are multiple people at the scene of a crisis, everyone assumes someone else will be the one to step in to help.
“In a group, there's so much noise happening about 'should I do something or is someone else going to do something? That sort of fear of acting and the hope you don't have to act'” she tells Insight. “I think there is a lot of fear operating; I do think we're not trained around moral courage.”
But Ms Shaw believes a law might give some people the “confidence to act” if someone's life is in danger.
“[A duty to rescue law] would in some cases give people the confidence to act. [But] there is that fear that if I act, how do I read the situation fast enough? What are all the implications?”
From a woman who regrets saving the life of her daughter's rapist, to a man who walked past someone dying on a mountain, tonight's Insight discusses whether we have a moral and legal duty to save another person's life.
Catch Insight tonight at 8.30PM on SBS ONE.
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