What crime would someone be charged with if they chose not to save someone's life?

[handsomeharry]

@Shodan

Are there civil liabilities?

I am walking down the street. I see a man beating a woman with a baseball bat. I do nothing - I don’t call 911, I don’t attempt to intervene, I just continue walking and forget all about it. I am not in fear of my life, I don’t know either party, I just don’t care, and, when the police question me later, I just say “it was none of my business”. Have I breached a duty of care? Am I civilly liable because I didn’t do anything, however slight?

On a possibly related note, the person who killed Kitty Genovese died today. AFAIK nobody was held liable in that case for not calling the cops.

Regards,
Shodan

IIRC, the Kitty Genovese thing was, MOL, an urban legend.
I’m too lazy to look up the facts, but, what happened was too long and confusing a tableau for any of the locals to be able to pinpoint an action that could help, there were some calls to the PD, and the newspapers were basically omitting a bunch of facts. Something like that.

[Atamasama]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/nyregion/winston-moseley-81-killer-of-kitty-genovese-dies-in-prison.html

While there was no question that the attack occurred, and that some neighbors ignored cries for help, the portrayal of 38 witnesses as fully aware and unresponsive was erroneous. The article grossly exaggerated the number of witnesses and what they had perceived. None saw the attack in its entirety. Only a few had glimpsed parts of it, or recognized the cries for help. Many thought they had heard lovers or drunks quarreling. There were two attacks, not three. And afterward, two people did call the police. A 70-year-old woman ventured out and cradled the dying victim in her arms until they arrived. Ms. Genovese died on the way to a hospital.