A formerly homeless man who ended up in a mental institution for more than two years because of mistaken identity is suing the state and various Honolulu police officers, Hawaii public defenders and doctors.
Joshua Spriestersbach's attorneys say in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Honolulu that Hawaii officials haven't responded to a petition seeking to correct his records to ensure the error never happens again.
The petition filed in state court in August laid bare Spriestersbach's bizarre plight, which started with him falling asleep on a sidewalk while he was homeless, hungry and waiting in a long line for food outside a Honolulu shelter in 2017.
When a police officer roused him awake, Spriestersbach thought he was being arrested for the city's ban on sitting or laying on public sidewalks.
Joshua Spriesterbach, 50, was mistaken for Thomas Castleberry and wrongfully arrested by Honolulu Police when he was waiting outside a shelter to get food
The officer mistook him for a man named Thomas Castleberry, who had a warrant out for his arrest for allegedly violating probation in a 2006 drug case.
Despite Spriestersbach's protests that he wasn't Castleberry, but the more he protested, the more cops ignored his pleas.
His various public defenders, even after he provided his relevant identification, also didn't believe him
He ended up in the Hawaii State Hospital, where he was forced to take psychiatric drugs, the petition said.
When a doctor looked into his case and verified the mix-up, officials tried to cover up the mistake by quietly setting him free with just 50 cents to his name, his lawyers said.
Thomas Castleberry had been incarcerated in Spring Creek Correctional Facility in Seward, Alaska since 2016. He is due for release in 2022
Spriestersbach´s lawsuit alleges false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, malicious prosecution, abuse of process and other claims.
State Public Defender James Tabe said Monday his office had no comment, while a spokesperson for the Hawaii attorney general's office didn't immediately respond to a message seeking comment. Representatives for Honolulu police also didn't immediately respond.
Spriestersbach's lawyers hope the lawsuit will lead to procedural changes to ensure proper identification of people in custody, said Kenneth Lawson, co-director of the Hawaii Innocence Project. They're also seeking monetary damages, to be determined in court.
The lawsuit sheds new light on factors that led to the mix-up, starting with an encounter with officers that happened years earlier.
Spriestersbach was arrested in 2011 for sleeping in a stairwell of a Honolulu middle school. It's unclear why, but he gave the last name Castleberry, which was his grandfather's last name, his lawyers said. He didn't give a first name.
Mr Spriestersbach now lives with his sister in Vermont and is afraid to leave her 10-acre property, thinking he is going to be rearrested
Thomas Castleberry's 2009 warrant came up, but police were able to determine Spriestersbach wasn't Thomas Castleberry.
Spriestersbach was arrested again in 2015 for sleeping in a park. He gave his real name, but Thomas Castleberry appeared as an alias. Authorities checked fingerprints and again determined he wasn't Castleberry.
During his 2017 arrest, Spriestersbach gave his real name, but Thomas Castleberry still showed up as an alias. This time, he was arrested for the warrant.
Even though he was fingerprinted and photographed at a jail, no one checked the prints or photo against Thomas Castleberry's, the lawsuit said.
Castleberry, who isn't related to Spriestersbach, is in custody with the Alaska of Department of Corrections, with an expected release date sometime in 2022, the lawsuit said.
The Hawaii Innocence Project is a non-profit 'with a mission to free prisoners who are factually innocent but who have been wrongfully convicted'
Castleberry had been in prison since 2016 for holding a woman hostage at gunpoint at an Alaska campsite.
The Alaska Public Defender Agency, which has represented Castleberry, declined to comment Monday.
Police and others, including Spriestersbach's public defenders and doctors, all had access to information that would have properly identified both men, the lawsuit said.
'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 Mr. Castleberry,' the lawsuit said.
'Instead, they determined that Joshua was delusional and incompetent just because he refused to admit that he was Mr. Castleberry and refused to acknowledge Mr. Castleberry's crimes.'
Spiestersbach now lives with his sister in Vermont. His lawyers said he declined to be interviewed for this story.
'The more Mr. Spriestersbach vocalized his innocence by asserting that he is not Mr. Castleberry, the more he was declared delusional and psychotic by the H.S.H. staff and doctors and heavily medicated,' said the Hawaii Innocence Project, which filed a petition in August asking a judge to vacate the arrest and correct Spriestersbach's records.
The Hawaii Innocence Project is a nonprofit 'with a mission to free prisoners who are factually innocent but who have been wrongfully convicted.'
'Right now we just want his record cleared. He could get arrested again under the same predicament,' said a spokesman for the organization.
His attorneys argue the ordeal could have been avoided if police simply compared the two men's photographs and fingerprints.
It wasn't until a compassionate psychiatrist at the hospital listened to Spriestersbach that his two-year and eight-month ordeal came to end.
Through simple Google searches and a few phone calls, it was verified that Spriestersbach was on another island when Castleberry was initially arrested.
The Hawaii Innocence Project document also says that police, the state public defender's office, the state attorney general and the hospital 'share in the blame for this gross miscarriage of justice.'
Hawaii has one of the highest rates of homelessness in the US, with 465 homeless people per every 100,000 residents, according to the Washington Post.
Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell has directed the police force to carry out a 'war on homeless.'
Areas homeless people frequent are often targeted by police, with officials putting homeless people in jail for minor, victimless offenses.
'We cannot let the homeless ruin our economy and take over the city,' said Caldwell in 2014.
After his release, he ended up at a homeless shelter, which contacted his family.
His sister, Vedanta Griffith, had spent nearly 16 years looking for him. The Vermont woman moved to Hawaii with her brother and her husband, who was stationed on Oahu with the Army in 2003.
Spriestersbach then moved to the Big Island and disappeared while suffering mental health issues, she said.
'Part of what they used against him was his own argument: `I'm not Thomas Castleberry. I didn't commit these crimes. ... This isn't me,' Griffith said.
'So they used that as saying he was delusional, as justification for keeping him.'
'And then when light is shown on it, what do they do? They don't even put it on the record. They don't make it part of the case,' Griffith said. 'And then they don't come to him and say, `We are so sorry´ or, how about even `Gee, this wasn't you. You were right all along.´'
Spriestersbach now refuses to leave his sister's 10-acre property.
'He's so afraid that they're going to take him again,' Griffith said.
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