Man Sent to Prison For Almost Three Years After Being Mistakenly Identified as a Wanted Man; Every Time He Insisted He Wasn't the Man They Claimed He Was, They Sent Him to a Mental Hospital to be Injected with Anti-Psychotic Drugs

Absolute nightmare.

This is how the servitors of The State cover up their mistakes.

A homeless man in Hawaii was arrested for a crime he did not commit and was subsequently detained for nearly three years in a mental hospital, as authorities believed the man was "delusional and psychotic."

The man's attorneys have said the tragic ordeal could have been avoided had police cross-referenced their suspect's photos and fingerprints with the man they had in custody, the Associated Press reported.

All they had to do was to compare fingerprints and photos -- which they had on file -- to determine the man they arrested was not the man they sought.

But they didn't bother.

The Hawaii Innocence Project presented their case to a judge on Monday, asking the state to vacate the arrest of Joshua Spriesterbach, who was detained by police in 2017, when he was presumed to be a man named Thomas Castleberry. Police had been looking for Castleberry for a probation violation tied to a 2006 drug case.

According to court records, Spriesterbach, 50, had been waiting in a line for food outside a Honolulu homeless shelter when he fell asleep on the sidewalk.

Spriesterbach awoke to find he was under arrest -- for breaking the city's ban on sleeping on public walkways, he assumed.

However, the arresting officer had mistaken him for fugitive Castleberry, despite Spriesterbach's denials.

For all his protests, Spriesterbach was committed to the Hawaii State Hospital (HSH).

"Yet, the more Mr. Spriestersbach vocalized his innocence by asserting that he is not Mr. Castleberry, the more he was declared delusional and psychotic by the HSH staff and doctors and heavily medicated," the petitioners said in their statement.

...

"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."

He was finally released -- "in secret."

Because no one wanted to admit their callous incompetence.

The Afghanistan Debacle makes a whole lot more sense, suddenly.

God have mercy on him whom the Ruling Class and its servitors find inconvenient.

posted by Ace at 01:18 PM

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