Police Wrongly Accused An Innocent Homeless Man And Locked Him Up In Mental Health Hospital For Two Years

Police, in Hawaii, accused this innocent man of a crime he never committed and locked him up in a mental hospital for nearly three years

Imagine getting locked up in a mental hospital despite being completely okay. This is what happened here when police accidentally locked up an innocent man in a mental hospital for more than two years. 

Vedanta Griffith via AP

Spriestersbach was homeless at that time and was waiting for his food

The man named Joshua Spriestersbach was homeless at the time when police arrested him for a crime he didn't commit and took him to the Hawaii State Hospital.

The poor man had to spend almost three years at a mental health hospital. Joshua was forced to take psychiatric drugs, though he was not mentally ill. 

The man tried to convince the doctors and the police but they never listened

The Hawaii Innocence Project demanded the court to have Joshua's records subsequently corrected. They also filed a petition on Monday night to have a judge rescind Spriestersbach’s arrest. 

In 2017, Spriestersbach slept on the sidewalk outside a Honolulu shelter waiting for food. He was awakened by a police officer who arrested him in relation to an outstanding warrant from 2006 for drug crimes. The officer mistook Spriestersbach for a man named Thomas Castleberry. 

Spriestersbach tried to convince the doctors and the police that they had the wrong man but they didn't listen. 

Joshua

Spriestersbach was simply declared delusional and psychotic

The poor man was ‘declared delusional and psychotic by the HSH staff and doctors’ and subsequently ‘heavily medicated’, stated the petition.

The petition says;

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.

Finally, his psychiatrist started believing his claims and called for a detective

No one believed his true identity, not even Spriestersbach’s own public defenders.

Finally, after spending two years and eight months in the mental hospital, a hospital psychiatrist started believing his claims. 

The psychiatrist then called a detective who checked Spriestersbach’s fingerprints and photograph and confirmed that he was not Thomas Castleberry. 

According to the court document, Spriestersbach was on a different island when Thomas Castleberry was first arrested for his crime. 

The petition, filed by Hawaii Innocence Project, stated how easy it had been to check the true identity of Spriestersbach but still, he was wrongly accused. 

The petition says that the police, the state public defender’s office, the state attorney general, and the hospital all ‘share in the blame for this gross miscarriage of justice’.

According to the reports, Thomas R. Castleberry, 49, is currently living in Spring Creek Correctional Facility in Seward, Alaska.

His sister feels disappointed that no one even apologised to her brother

These days, Spriestersbach is living in Vermont with his sister, Vedanta Griffith, who spent nearly 16 years searching for him. Spriestersbach lost contact with his family after he moved to Hawaii and disappeared on the big island.

Vedanta Griffith feels disappointed and says her brother never received an apology. She says this incident affected her brother so much that now he refuses to leave her house in fear he might get taken to the hospital again.