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By JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER, Associated Press
HONOLULU (AP) – A formerly homeless man who was put in a mental hospital for more than two years because of a mix-up is suing the state and various Honolulu police officers, Hawaiian public defenders and doctors.
Joshua Spriestersbach’s attorneys say in a lawsuit filed in Honolulu‘s U.S. District Court on Sunday that Hawaii officials failed to respond to a petition attempting to correct his records to ensure the mistake never occurred happened again.
The petition submitted to the regional court in August exposed Spriestersbach’s bizarre plight, which began with him falling asleep on a sidewalk. He was homeless and hungry while waiting in a long line outside a Honolulu animal shelter in 2017.
When a police officer woke him up, Sprestersbach thought he had been arrested because of the city’s ban on sitting and lying down.
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The officer mistook him for a man named Thomas Castleberry, on whom an arrest warrant was issued for alleged parole violation in a 2006 drug case.
Despite Spriestersbach’s protests that he was not Castleberry, he ended up at Hawaii State Hospital, where he was forced to take psychotropic drugs, the petition said. When a doctor examined his case and confirmed the mix-up, officials tried to cover up the mistake by quietly releasing him with only 50 cents in his name, his lawyers said.
The Spriestersbach lawsuit asserts willful detention, willful infliction of emotional distress, malicious persecution, abuse of procedure, and other claims.
Prosecutor James Tabe said Monday his office had made no comment, while a spokesman for the Hawaii Attorney General did not immediately respond to a message requesting comment. Honolulu police officials also did not respond immediately.
Sprestersbach attorneys hope the lawsuit will result in procedural changes to ensure proper identification of those detained, said Kenneth Lawson, co-director of the Hawaii Innocence Project. They are also demanding monetary damages to be determined in court.
The lawsuit sheds new light on factors that led to the mix-up, beginning with an encounter with officials years earlier.
Spriestersbach was arrested in 2011 for sleeping on the stairwell of a middle school in Honolulu. It’s unclear why, but he gave the last name Castleberry, which was his grandfather’s last name, his lawyers said. He did not give a first name.
The 2009 arrest warrant for Thomas Castleberry was issued, but police were able to determine that Sprestersbach was not Thomas Castleberry.
Spriestersbach was arrested again in 2015 for sleeping in a park. He gave his real name, but Thomas Castleberry appeared as a pseudonym. Authorities checked fingerprints and again determined he wasn’t Castleberry.
Sprestersbach gave his real name during his 2017 arrest, but Thomas Castleberry still appeared as a pseudonym. This time he was arrested on the arrest warrant.
Although he was fingerprinted and photographed in a prison, no one checked the prints or photo with those of Thomas Castleberry, the lawsuit said.
Castleberry, who is not related to Spriestersbach, is on remand with an expected release date in 2022, the lawsuit said. The Alaska Public Defender Agency, which has represented Castleberry, declined to comment on Monday.
The police and others, including Sprestersbach’s public defenders and doctors, all had access to information that would have properly identified both men, the lawsuit said.
“Before January 2020, not a single person acted on the information available to determine that Joshua was telling the truth – that he was not Mr. Castleberry,” the lawsuit reads. “Instead, they found that Joshua was delusional and incompetent simply because he refused to admit he was Mr. Castleberry and refused to acknowledge Mr. Castleberry’s crimes.”
Spiestersbach now lives in Vermont with his sister. His lawyers said he declined to be interviewed for the story.
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