Free Republic

After spending more than two years in a psychiatric facility against his will in a case of mistaken identity and being forced to take mind-altering medication, a Hawaii man is taking legal action. Joshua Spriestersbach was arrested and committed to the Hawai’i State Hospital after authorities allegedly mistook him for a criminal named Thomas Castleberry, according to lawsuit filed on filed on Sunday. Spriestersbach was sleeping on a sidewalk just outside a homeless shelter in May 2017 when Honolulu Police picked him up and booked him for Castleberry’s alleged crimes. Castleberry, whose criminal record includes drug use, auto theft, and...

A houseless man was arrested and held in a state mental hospital for two years and eight months after being mistaken for the wrong man, according to the Hawai'i Innocence Project. The advocacy group filed a lawsuit Monday night alleging Joshua Spriestersbach was wrongly arrested in 2017 while he was waiting for food outside of the Safe Haven shelter in Chinatown. Ken Lawson, the co-founder of the Hawai'i Innocence Project, claimed the officer who booked Spriestersbach did not compare fingerprints when he mistook him for Thomas Castleberry, who was charged for several crimes in three different states.

He woke up to a police officer arresting him for violating the city’s ban on lying down in public places. At least that’s what Spriestersbach thought. The officer actually arrested him because he believed Spriestersbach was a man named Thomas Castleberry, It was the first mistake of many that led to Spriestersbach spending two years and eight months in jail and a mental institution for crimes he didn’t commit, For speaking out, Spriestersbach was deemed “problematic” and given antipsychotic medications, including Haldol, which made him despondent and catatonic. “The more Mr. Spriestersbach vocalized his innocence by asserting that he is...