The Black Hole of San Francisco

Naturally Cohen won't believe the city actually is moving to build a new jail until he sees a signed contract and the doors of San Bruno locked forever. "If they win their appeal they could just drop [the bids]," Cohen says.

Meanwhile, the sheriff is assuming there will be no new jail. He wants to tear down San Bruno Jail tomorrow, without a replacement. The mayor has given him a brig on Treasure Island that will house 100 to 150 of the 500-plus inmates at Jail No. 3. That leaves the sheriff with a 350-inmate question mark. The chances that he could persuade judges to let that many pretrial felons out of jail are slim. He knows this.

"It's going to be a tough sell," he says. It will be an even tougher sell if Renne wins on appeal and Hennessey no longer has the Orrick ruling as leverage on the judges.

Everything about Jail No. 3 is up in the air. And amid all the uncertainties, it's reasonable to believe in one horribly unfortunate possibility: The city could continue, against all reason and moral imperative, to house innocent people in an unconstitutional deathtrap.

In his bleaker moods, Cohen thinks the only thing that will finally move the city to build a new jail is a disaster. He calls it the Birmingham Church Syndrome, referring to the 16th Street Baptist Church firebombing that killed four young black girls in Alabama on Sept. 15, 1963, and finally made the federal government pay attention to civil rights.

Will it really take the sight of horribly burned or crushed bodies in the heap of a burned or collapsed San Bruno Jail to make the most liberal city in America take action? The history of Jail No. 3 suggests that the most realistic answer to that question is -- perhaps. Perhaps that is exactly what it will take.