Cast your mind back to Hurricane Ivan in 2004, and all the rain it dumped on the Northeast. Sometime during that rainstorm, a two-year-old kid fell into a raging, flood-swollen stream, was washed away, and drowned. A watching woman, who had already snagged the kid and taken him back to his father once, could do nothing but scream for the kid's father, because she could not swim.
A jury just convicted her for not jumping in to help ANYWAY, and she has been sentenced to up to 18 months in prison ... for not turning "Two-year-old drowns in flood" to "Two-year-old and would-be-rescuer drown in flood."
This is an utterly idiotic decision. Even professional rescue swimmers are under no legal obligation to go into the water to rescue a drowning person if, in their judgement, their own lives would be forfeit in the attempt. But the District Attorney in this case, asserting that she created a legal duty by saving the kid the firsttime, said:
"Common sense dictates someone in that close proximity to a child is obligated to do something," Mr. Gorman said. "I think anybody in their right mind would jump in."
Someone who can't swim? Jump into raging floodwaters?
"If the Law supposes that, then the Law, sir, is an ass." -- Samuel Pepys
And I suppose it would also be common sense for someone who'd just watched someone else fall off a cliff to jump off after them to try to catch them. If this is what passes for "common sense", it's no wonder we, as a society, are in such sorry shape.