An innocent man has been awarded a $975,000 payout after he was wrongfully arrested and thrown in a Hawaii psychiatric hospital for years.
Joshua Spriestersbach, who was sleeping on the streets at the time, ended up in the psych ward after cops arrested him for drug crimes committed by another man named Thomas Castleberry back in 2017, court records show.
The mistaken identity saga unfolded years earlier when Spriestersbach, now 54, was found sleeping at Kawananakoa Middle School in Punchbowl and gave cops the wrong name.
Spriestersbach, who has schizophrenia, wouldn’t give a first name but gave his grandfather’s last name: Castleberry.
After running the name, the cop found an outstanding 2009 warrant for Thomas Castleberry, who was wanted on a spate of drug charges.
Spriestersbach was nabbed but later failed to show up to court.
Years later, Spriestersbach was awoken again by cops outside the Safe Haven shelter in Chinatown and arrested on the outstanding warrant after Castleberry’s name was listed as one of his aliases.
Despite repeatedly insisting he wasn’t Castleberry, Spriestersbach spent four months at Oʻahu Community Correctional Center and more than two years at the Hawaii State Hospital before he was released in January 2020.
“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,” a lawsuit filed by him states.
“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 Honolulu City Council approved the $975,000 settlement for Spriestersbach at a meeting last week.
He also may receive a $200,000 settlement from the state to resolve legal claims against the Hawaii’s public defender’s office.
Hawaii police and the mayor’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
With Post wires
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