Man wins payout after mistaken identity led to 2 years in mental ward

A man was wrongfully arrested and detained at a Hawaii state psychiatric hospital for two years in a case of mistaken identity. 

Joshua Spriestersbach, 55, had been living on the street in 2017 when police arrested him for crimes committed by another man named Thomas Castleberry. 

At the time, Castleberry had already been incarcerated in Alaska since 2016, according to court filings cited in the lawsuit. 

During two previous interactions, police misidentified Spriestersbach and then did not correct the record, according to a lawsuit Spriestersbach filed in 2021.

Those errors and others led to his eventual 2017 arrest and a yearslong detention.

He is now set to receive a $975,000 payout from the City and County of Honolulu.

Spriestersbach also may receive a $200,000 settlement from the state to resolve legal claims against the Hawaii public defender's office.

The settlement follows years of legal action in which Spriestersbach alleged false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, abuse of process and intentional infliction of emotional distress stemming from the ordeal. 

In 2011, Spriestersbach was homeless and sleeping at Kawananakoa Middle School in Punchbowl when an officer woke him up and asked for his name. 

Spriestersbach would not give a first name, his lawsuit says, and gave only his grandfather's last name: Castleberry.

The officer found a 2009 warrant for Thomas Castleberry and arrested Spriestersbach for the outstanding warrant. He told the officer he was not Thomas Castleberry, the complaint says, but the officer arrested him anyway. 

Spriestersbach didn't show up to his court date, and the court later dropped the bench warrant for him. But the mistaken identity followed him.

In 2015, an HPD officer approached Spriestersbach after hours in 'A'ala Park, where he had been sleeping. 

He initially refused to give his name to that officer but eventually did so, the complaint says. 

Thomas Castleberry was listed as an alias, and there was a warrant out for his arrest, the complaint says, but because the officers took Spriestersbach's fingerprints this time, they confirmed he was not Castleberry.

Still, the complaint says, they did not update the police department's records.

The lawsuit alleges authorities had access to fingerprints and photographs that could have definitively distinguished the two men but failed to properly compare or act on that information. 

On the day of 2017 arrest, Spriestersbach was waiting for food outside Safe Haven in Chinatown. 

He fell asleep on the sidewalk while waiting in line, his complaint says, and an HPD officer woke him up and arrested him for Casteberry's outstanding warrant.

According to court filings, Spriestersbach believed at the time he was being arrested for violating Honolulu's restrictions on sitting or lying on public sidewalks, not for an outstanding warrant tied to another man.

Spriestersbach spent four months at O'ahu Community Correctional Center and more than two years at the Hawaii State Hospital before being released on January 17, 2020.

During his confinement at the hospital, Spriestersbach was forced to take psychiatric medication, according to filings from the Hawaii Innocence Project. 

Police officers, public defenders and health workers had had the chance to correct the mistake that led to Spriesterbach's detention and custody, according to his complaint. But nobody did so.

'Prior to January 2020, not a single person acted on the available information to determine that Joshua was telling the truth - that he was not Thomas R. Castleberry,' the complaint says. 

The complaint further alleges that even after Spriestersbach provided identification, public defenders and other officials failed to believe his claims that he was not Castleberry. 

'Instead, they determined that Joshua was delusional and incompetent just because he refused to admit that he was Thomas R. Castleberry and refused to acknowledge Thomas R. Castleberry's crimes.'

The complaint says city practices failing to properly identify homeless and mentally ill people - as well as failing to correct mistaken records that result in their arrests - were 'the moving force' behind Spriesterbach's arrest and detention.

Attorneys also warned that without correcting official records, Spriestersbach remained at risk of being wrongly arrested again under the same mistaken identity. 

According to his lawyers, the mistake was ultimately uncovered only after a psychiatrist at the hospital prompted a closer review, leading to fingerprint verification that confirmed he was not the man named in the warrant. 

The Hawaii Innocence Project said in filings that police, public defenders, the state attorney general's office and hospital staff 'share in the blame for this gross miscarriage of justice.' 

After his release, Spriestersbach was eventually reunited with family members who had spent years searching for him, though his sister later said he remains fearful that the same mistake could happen again.

Spriestersbach's lawyers did not respond to requests for comment. HPD and the mayor's office also did not respond to a request for comment.

His legal team had previously sought court intervention to formally correct his records, arguing that the failure to do so left the underlying error unresolved. 

A majority of Honolulu council members approved the settlement on Wednesday afternoon, though council member Val Okimoto voted to approve it with reservations.