April I wrote about the case of Jerome Murdough, 56, a homeless ex-Marine who was remanded to Rikers Island for attempting to shelter in the stairwell of a Harlem housing project. Murdough was mentally ill, with multiple psychiatric diagnoses and what his mother referred to as “beer problems.” His bail was set bizarrely high for a homeless vagrant — $2,500 — and his mental condition necessitated oversight, with jail authorities ordering that he be checked every 15 minutes. He wasn’t. And neither was his jail cell’s heating system, which malfunctioned, and the abandoned homeless man was baked to death in captivity.

Naturally, nobody did anything wrong. Or so they said.