Honolulu City Council has signed off on a $975,000 settlement for a man who was wrongfully arrested and committed to Hawaiʻi State Hospital after authorities mistakenly tied him to another person’s criminal record. The payout covers the city’s portion of a larger legal deal that claims city and state agencies failed to properly confirm his identity and brushed off his repeated protests that they had the wrong man. The case traces back to a 2017 arrest and a federal lawsuit filed in 2021 that together exposed serious gaps in how police, public defenders and hospital staff handled basic identity checks.
City Council Approves $975,000 Payout
A majority of Honolulu council members voted Wednesday to approve the $975,000 payment to Joshua Spriestersbach, according to Honolulu Civil Beat. Spriestersbach’s complaint says he was living on the street in 2017 when police arrested him while he waited for food outside Safe Haven in Chinatown. The suit alleges officers misidentified him as Thomas Castleberry and that earlier fingerprint checks, which would have shown the mix up, were never updated. Council member Val Okimoto voted to approve the settlement with reservations, the outlet reported.
Settlement Breakdown And State Role
Local reporting shows the payout is part of a global agreement valued at about $1.775 million, with roughly $975,000 coming from Honolulu taxpayers, about $200,000 from the state tied to claims against the public defender’s office and roughly $600,000 from private insurance, according to Hawaii News Now. That earlier story noted none of the defendants admitted liability as part of the deal and that the package required approval by state lawmakers and the City Council before any money could move.
Court Record And Timeline
Federal court filings lay out the timeline in detail. Spriestersbach was arrested on May 11, 2017 and initially processed at the Oʻahu Community Correctional Center before being civilly committed to Hawaiʻi State Hospital in September 2017. Court records show he remained there until his release on Jan. 17, 2020, after a hospital psychiatrist reviewed outside records and finally confirmed his true identity. He filed the federal lawsuit in 2021, and the filings trace a series of missed chances by multiple agencies to correct his records, according to federal court records.
What The Lawsuit Says
The complaint, as summarized by Honolulu Civil Beat, alleges that "city practices failing to properly identify homeless and mentally ill people were the moving force" behind Spriestersbach’s arrest and detention. It adds that "prior to January 2020, not a single person acted on the available information to determine that Joshua was telling the truth," a pointed line the suit uses to describe repeated missed opportunities to fix the error.
Legal Claims And Next Steps
The federal case includes Section 1983 claims, an ADA Title II claim, false imprisonment and medical malpractice allegations among others, as set out in the court filings. Once all required approvals and final paperwork are completed, the parties say the settlement will resolve the overlapping federal and state claims and trigger payments to Spriestersbach, according to the same records and related reporting.
Why This Matters
Spriestersbach now lives with family in Vermont and is expected to receive settlement funds this summer once remaining approvals are cleared, Hawaii News Now reported. His ordeal highlights what can happen when basic identity checks and shared records fail people who are homeless or living with serious mental illness, and it has renewed calls for tighter procedures and clearer record keeping across police, defense and health systems.
