Hawaii Mistaken Identity Case: ‘They’re Just Trying To Cover It Up’… Joshua Spriestersbach was held in the Hawaii State Hospital for more than two years after police identified him as someone else. No one’s talking about how things went so wrong.
Joshua Spriestersbach fell asleep on a sidewalk outside the Safe Haven homeless shelter in Chinatown on May 11, 2017 while waiting for a free meal.
When he woke, a Honolulu police officer arrested him for the crimes of another man — Thomas Castleberry — who was wanted on a series of drug charges in 2006.
The mix-up led to Spriestersbach spending more than two years inside a state-run mental institution where he was heavily medicated and repeatedly told he was someone he was not despite his repeated protestations.
