Wendell Baptiste explained it to me on the eleventh of March 2025 in an office with four box files on the floor, in about nine minutes, and I made him do it twice.

There is no general duty to rescue in American law.

If you are standing beside a person who is drowning and you are an adult of sound mind and you can swim and you do nothing at all, you have committed no offence anywhere in this country except in a small handful of states with narrow statutes that are almost never charged.

That is the baseline.