That's why we don't fall asleep on the sidewalk, kids.
How was this man wrongfully thrown into a mental hospital for TWO YEARS AND EIGHT MONTHS? Allow me to explain.
Joshua Spriesterbach was waiting in a long line for food outside a shelter in 2017. It was a typical hot day in Honolulu, Hawaii. Spriesterbach fell asleep on the sidewalk. A police officer eventually awakened him.
Initially, Spriesterbach thought he was being arrested for Honolulu's ban on laying down or sitting on public sidewalks.
That's when the story turns into a Twilight Zone episode.
The officer mistook Spriesterbach for another man, Thomas Castleberry, who had an arrest warrant for violating probation from a 2006 drug case.
"Spriestersbach's attorneys argue it all could have been cleared up if police simply compared the two men's photographs and fingerprints," AP reports.
Poor Spriesterbach insisted he was not Castleberry, but to no avail. Hawaii officials eventually put him into the Hawaii State Hospital.
"[T]he 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," Hawaii Innocence Project said.
Pleading his case effectively turned into a Kafkatrap for Spriesterbach. The more he pleaded his innocence, the more guilty (and desperate) it made him seem!
I mean, it was a mental hospital after all.
"It was understandable that Mr. Spriestersbach was in an agitated state when he was being wrongfully incarcerated for Mr. Castleberry's crime and despite his continual denial of being Mr. Castleberry and providing all of his relevant identification and places where he was located during Mr. Castleberry's court appearances, no one would believe him or take any meaningful steps to verify his identity and determine that what Mr. Spriestersbach was telling the truth – he was not Mr. Castleberry," Hawaii Innoncence Project said.
Court documents said all anybody had to do was do some quick "[Internet] searches and a few phone calls to verify Spriesterbach was on another island when Castleberry was initially arrested."
But, alas, Spriesterbach's legal counsel was none other than Hawaii's public defender's office. 🙄
Records show Castleberry was in prison in Alaska since 2016...
So in other words, Spriesterbach was wrongfully arrested in 2017 for someone already in prison in another state since 2016!
Hawaii Innocence Project's petition alleges the police, the hospital, the state public defender's office, and the state attorney general "share in the blame for this gross miscarriage of justice."
Governments don't do a good job of admitting fault (if at all).
"A secret meeting was held with all of the parties, except Mr. Spriestersbach, present. There is no court record of this meeting or no public court record of this meeting. No entry or order reflects this miscarriage of justice that occurred or a finding that Mr. Spriestersbach is not Thomas Castleberry," a court document said.
After Spriesterbach was quietly released in January 2020, he contacted his family from a homeless shelter. His sister had actually been looking for him for nearly 16 years!
"And then when light is shown on it, what do they do? They don't even put it on the record," his sister said. "They don't make it part of the case. 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.'"
Spriesterbach, 50, now lives on his sister's 10-acre property and "refuses to leave," according to AP.
"He's so afraid that they're going to take him again," his sister said.
