Husband and I watched this (MST3K version) recently, and we weren't sure: could Tom be prosecuted for not helping the girl while she was hanging there? Sort of an opposite of a Good Samaritan law? The girl said Tom Stewart killed her, but all he did was not stop her from dying.
My will is as strong as yours and my kingdom is as great...you have no power over me.
I'm not sure if it was illegal back then; but the little girl doesn't accuse him of killing the ex girlfriend, she accused Tom of killing the boat man that was trying to blackmail him . I don't know if it was a legal issue (the plot), but it was more of a conscience issue and how it led Tom to eventually kill . Either way, he still would have had a tough time telling people she fell off on her own; without witnesses, people would conclude he got rid of his obsessive ex-girlfriend in the middle of the night in an abandoned lighthouse all the way at the top.
shareDirector Bert I. Gordon put himself on thin ice making his 11 year old daughter Susan Gordon look sensual and photogenic! AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRROOOOOOGGGAAAHHHH!
The late Lori Martin looked sensual in Cape Fear(1962). She was 16 at the time!
He probably would not have been charged with murder, but it is very likely that he could have been charged with obstruction of justice (and other crimes) for not reporting the accident and the death.
I just started watching it, so I'm not sure what happens later, but I'm sure somewhere along the line he lies to law enforcement about what happened to Vi, which would be another thing to charge him with.
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"Failure to render aid" is a legal concept ensconced in laws of many, if not all, states, at one time or another, and still most of them, I'm guessing. By far the majority of the time this happens, it involves other kinds of accidents, usually motor vehicles. But yeah...if it could ever be established that all you had to do was to offer a hand, that's going to make a jury want to nail you if there's a statute on hand to do it, of course. But it seems to me it would be very difficult to reach a sufficient level of certitude. What if a good defense lawyer simply has the guy say he was in fear for his own life, with a struggling victim and him about to be pulled over the edge too? I mean, unless you said something on a recording to somebody about how you could've helped, you weren't afraid for your own life, and you absolutely wanted the @#$% to die, seems to me it would be pretty easy to establish reasonable doubt with most juries in most situations where this would come up other than in a hit-and-run, where the common defense to "failure to stop and render" is that the defendant wasn't aware that somebody had been hit, or that she thought she hit an animal, or whatever.
Also, I think you could be suable in civil court, based on an assignment of percentage of responsibility, under a wrongful death statute or some other tort law.