Man arrested in mistaken identity case locked in Hawaii mental health hospital for two years

Joshua Spriestersbach was released after being locked up for two years and eight months and forced to take psychiatric drugs

A homeless man wrongly arrested for a crime committed by someone else and locked up in a mental health hospital for nearly three years was quietly released, recent court documents in Hawaii show.

In a court petition filed on Monday night, the Hawaii Innocence Project asked a judge to rescind Joshua Spriestersbach's arrest and correct his records. The court filings detail Spriestersbach's plight, which started when he fell asleep on a sidewalk while waiting for food outside a Honolulu shelter in 2017.