Honolulu officials on Wednesday approved a $975,000 settlement for Joshua Spriestersbach, a man who sued over what his legal claims describe as a chain of police mistakes that followed him from a 2017 arrest to years of detention at Hawai‘i’s state psychiatric hospital. The Associated Press reported that the settlement stems from Spriestersbach being arrested and institutionalized due to mistaken identity involving another man named Thomas Castleberry.
Spriestersbach had been living on the street in 2017 when police arrested him for crimes committed by someone else with the same name. In his lawsuit, filed in 2021, Spriestersbach alleged that police misidentified him during earlier interactions and then did not correct the record, which his complaint says contributed to the later arrest and his subsequent detention.
The AP report said Spriestersbach’s case began in 2011, when an officer woke him while he slept at Kawananakoa Middle School in Punchbowl. The complaint said Spriestersbach would not provide a first name and gave only his grandfather’s last name, Castleberry, leading the officer to find a 2009 warrant for Thomas Castleberry and arrest him for that warrant. The report said Spriestersbach told the officer he was not Thomas Castleberry, but he was arrested anyway, and later the court dropped a bench warrant after he missed a court date—though the mistaken identity allegedly persisted.
The AP report also described a 2015 encounter in ‘A‘ala Park, where the complaint says an HPD officer approached Spriestersbach after hours as he slept. According to the lawsuit, Spriestersbach initially refused to give his name but eventually did; the complaint said Thomas Castleberry was listed as an alias and that there was an outstanding warrant for Castleberry, but that officers took Spriestersbach’s fingerprints and confirmed he was not Castleberry. The lawsuit alleged that even after that confirmation, the police department’s records were not updated.
On the day of Spriestersbach’s 2017 arrest, the AP report said he was waiting for food outside Safe Haven in Chinatown and fell asleep on the sidewalk while in line. The complaint said an HPD officer woke him and arrested him for Castleberry’s outstanding warrant. Spriestersbach spent four months at Oʻahu Community Correctional Center and more than two years at the Hawaiʻi State Hospital before being released on Jan. 17, 2020, according to the Associated Press account.
In quoting language from the complaint, the AP report said Spriestersbach alleged that before 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.” The complaint also described how officials concluded he was delusional and incompetent based on his refusal to admit that he was Thomas R. Castleberry and to acknowledge Castleberry’s crimes, as the AP reported.
The Associated Press said Spriestersbach’s lawyers alleged that failures in how the city identifies homeless and mentally ill people—and in how police correct mistaken records—were the “moving force” behind his arrest and detention. The AP report said Spriestersbach’s lawyers did not respond to requests for comment, and it also said HPD and the mayor’s office did not respond.
The AP reported that a majority of Honolulu council members approved the settlement on Wednesday afternoon, with council member Val Okimoto voting to approve it with reservations.
In addition to the Honolulu settlement, the AP report said Spriestersbach also may receive $200,000 from the state to resolve legal claims against the Hawaiʻi public defender’s office.