In 1997, 17-year-old Jeremy Strohmeyer entered a Las Vegas casino restroom holding the hand of 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson. He apparently raped and murdered the little girl in a restroom stall. While these horrendous crimes were being committed, Strohmeyer’s high school buddy, David Cash, entered the restroom and discovered the crimes in progress. Cash reportedly entered the restroom a few minutes after Strohmeyer went in, peered over the wall of a bathroom stall, and observed his friend with his hand over Sherrice Iverson’s mouth, muffling her cries for help. Cash left the restroom but failed to report the ongoing incident to a security guard or to the police. Cash’s inaction was awful enough, but then he spoke to reporters and gave listeners a chance to look into his mind, heart, and soul:

It’s a very tragic event, okay? But the simple fact remains I do not know this little girl. I do not know starving children in Panama. I do not know people that die of disease in Egypt. The only person I knew in this event was Jeremy Strohmeyer, and I know as his best friend that he had potential. . . . I’m sad that I lost a best friend. . . . I’m not going to lose sleep over somebody else’s problem. 

Even read today, Cash’s cold, remorseless words are shocking and infuriating. We are understandably affronted by his self-centeredness, and his narrow and skewed view of his moral duties to his “fellow man.” Cash told a reporter that he did not report his friend’s actions because, in a touching display of compassion, he “didn’t want to be the person who takes away Strohmeyer’s last day, his last night of freedom.” Cash, it seems, believes he does not owe anything to anybody except (perhaps) loyalty to his high school buddy who “only” committed crimes upon a young “stranger. 

Instructions 

1. Go to the website www.cengage.com/criminaljustice/samaha and read the selections regarding the controversy over the Good Samaritan Law. 

2. Write a paragraph summarizing the arguments for and against the ethics and legality of Good Samaritan laws and their application to David Cash. 

3. Study Vermont’s Bad Samaritan Law reprinted on the website. Write a paragraph answering the question: Is Vermont’s statute “ethical” public policy regarding people who watch bad things happen and stand by doing nothing? Back up your answer with details from the selections and from the Omissions as Criminal Acts section of the chapter.