23 ms·

Officials put the wrong man in a mental facility for two years

302 points by jbegley 5y ago

fennecfoxen 5y ago
https://archive.is/Rg64w https://archive.is/Rg64w
Causality1 5y ago
Nevertheless, the officer insisted that Spriestersbach was actually Castleberry and took him to jail. He was fingerprinted and had his photo taken, generating records that could have been used to prove he wasn’t Castleberry, the Innocence Project asserts. It's beyond me how anyone has one iota of faith in the US judicial system anymore.
- slackfan 5y ago
  This could have happened anywhere in the world, the US is hardly unique.
  - DecoPerson 5y ago
    I have faith in a situation like this being far less likely to occur in Australia.
    - zepto 5y ago
      Why? I see no reason to believe Australia’s social problems aren’t as bad as as the US.
    - satori99 5y ago
      Don't be too sure. Very similar things have happened in Australia before, and no doubt will again https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelia_Rau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelia_Rau
    - UnpossibleJim 5y ago
      https://www.mondaq.com/australia/crime/893326/imprisoning-the-innocent-the-causes-of-wrongful-convictions-in-australia https://www.mondaq.com/australia/crime/893326/imprisoning-th... There isn't a large Innocence Project (though a small one has popped up and should be supported) in Australia and there are overzealous prosecutors in Australia, just as in a lot of places (though the competition in America seems to be exceptionally strong). Faith is nice and all, but it doesn't free the innocent. There's a link to support Australia's innocence project, maybe tithe.
    - hilbert42 5y ago
      It's not yet as bad but it's becoming more and more like the US every day. Australian politicians rarely create original law, they either ape laws from elsewhere or are forced into copying laws from the country they're trying to do trade deals with. Thus Australian law is becoming more and more like that of the US. For that matter, things won't improve in any anglophone country until they ditch the adversarial system for the inquisitorial one that has a better chance of getting to the truth of a case. But don't hold your breath, that won't happen anytime soon.
    - drno123 5y ago
      With the current lockdown and incoming martial law, it seems that you already live in a dystopian universe.
    - wil421 5y ago
      Here you go. IIRC Australia hasn’t been side kind to it’s Indigenous population. https://obriensolicitors.com.au/case-studies-unlawful-imprisonment-false-arrest/ https://obriensolicitors.com.au/case-studies-unlawful-impris...
  - pempem 5y ago
    Then really its a global problem we need to figure out. Every day on HN we have debates about the trading of privacy for data for a more secure world. This is an indication that our efforts are broken, because people. But also that those people held a lot of different roles, in a diversity of offices across our judicial system.
  - SavantIdiot 5y ago
    How can you possibly make such a claim with any supporting evidence that it could be "anywhere"? EDIT: Confused "anywhere" with "everywhere". I'll take my F in logic today and show myself out.
    - TheFreim 5y ago
      Does someone need to provide a source proving that mistakes happen outside the United States?
    - sophacles 5y ago
      Actually, I think your doubt needs some sources. The foundational principle is that there exists at least one of: * a human that has never once made any mistake whatsoever * a system composed of humans who are mistake capable but the system itself actually makes no mistakes. Such a thing seems impossible - if you can point to the existence of such a thing, your doubt is worth entertaining, otherwise it's just contrarianism.
  - tonyarkles 5y ago
    Here's, among others, one of the absolutely wild examples from Canada: https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/ResearchPublications/202077E#a2-5 https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/Resear... Multiple people convicted by evidence provided by a quack of a doctor used as an Expert Witness by the crown.
  - tunesmith 5y ago
    Therefore what? Bad thing happens in the US, yes that's true, but well, that same bad thing happens in other places too, so therefore.... what?
    - staticman2 5y ago
      Don't get me wrong, i find this story outrageous, but whether our system is doing comparatively well or comparatively poor seems like useful empirical information. For one thing, if another country handles things better, that shows humans are capable of improving their system.
      - tunesmith 5y ago
        Ah yes, that does help. Too often I see people make statements like that and it just comes across as fatalistic, like an attempt to dissipate the will of others to do anything about it at all. I wonder what the other countries are that do better, and what they do differently. Maybe there should be a mandated evidence review every x years, irrespective of sentence.
    - mucholove 5y ago
      I love this attitude. In life, so many people are happy to reference themselves to a very poor standard. For mang Dominicans, it’s OK in the case of Dominican Republic to be the third country in Latin America for so many statistic—automobile accidents, coronavirus deaths, you name it. This is unacceptable to me. Pick the highest bar—and if the highest bar isn’t good enough—set a new standard. Sure, we will have failures—but we need to push the envelope and do “good” not “better than worse”.
    - ars 5y ago
      So therefore humans are humans. If it was unique you can point to what makes it unique - but if it happens everywhere, then it's because humans are humans. If you don't understand the source of the problem you have no change of fixing it.
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    The US is definitely unique in that it confines the largest number people against their will in the world, in terms of both per capita and raw population numbers. That context cannot be lost when examining the cruelty of the system. It's obviously at an extreme end of the spectrum, so treating it like "any other country" doesn't hold up. The system is designed to target and exploit vulnerable, poor people and turn them into productive assets. Once it has them, getting them out can be incredibly difficult because they become so profitable. Our penal system is not designed for rehabilitation but for profit generation.
  - lozenge 5y ago
    Here's one (sort of) from the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal Hundreds jailed or fined due to a faulty computer system blaming them - no other evidence - Post Office covered it up repeatedly - victims still not fully compensated.
- pstuart 5y ago
  It's a legal system, not a justice system.
  - harpiaharpyja 5y ago
    I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with that statement. I think justice should be considered the entire purpose of a legal system. And if it isn't working, it should be fixed. Accountability sounds like a good place to start. If an official causes harm to another person through negligence or otherwise they should be held accountable to the same standards as anyone else.
    - SerLava 5y ago
      They're just saying our legal system doesn't try to consistently create justice.
      - shadowgovt 5y ago
        It definintely tries (that's sort of the point of it). ... but it doesn't always succeed for multiple reasons. One of the most common being that it's not always possible to grant all parties justice. Sometimes, courts have to evaluate a zero-sum situation and decide how cost will be shared, so there's no way to move forward without constraining someone's rights. And people's definitions of "justice" vary, and are far more often grounded in emotion than coherent philosophy... It's not always even logically possible to grant all parties justice. The useful distinction to keep in mind is that the legal system will follow the law, but whether the outcome of that is "justice" is a subjective evaluation more than a measurable concept.
        samatman 5y ago
        > It definintely tries (that's sort of the point of it) This is probably argument from definition (unclear) but in any case, it's a statement which needs backing up. To cite a usual boogeyman for such discussions, the Soviet court system under Stalin wasn't at all interested in justice. It's not clear to me that the incentives in the US court system align with justice more than accidentally. As in, sometimes the guilty go to prison, as a side effect of the prosecutor's office needing to clear their docket and present good numbers to keep their budget up. Very occasionally, the innocent are cleared of crimes, and even more occasionally than that their lives aren't ruined in the process; defense attorneys want to look good as well.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  Mostly because these stories are incredibly rare. The Innocence Project does excellent work to try and prevent people like this from falling through the cracks.
  - Causality1 5y ago
    The stories are rare. We don't know how rare the events are. What percentage of people do the Innocence Project manage to review? It's certainly not everyone.
    - goodpoint 5y ago
      Absolutely not. The high imprisonment rate and the number of people imprisoned without a process is a clear symptom.
  - KerryJones 5y ago
    There are organizations dedicated to handling the repeated abuse of mental health facilities in similar ways here -- not the legal aspect, but the mental health. "Incredibly rare" feels like it's playing into the narrative of "oops, this is rare". So, I would argue, "one of many": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment
  - dehrmann 5y ago
    And if everyone who dropped the ball on this got a year in prison for it, they'd be even more rare.
    - toiletaccount 5y ago
      thats a good way to gum up the system so nothing ever gets done.
      - gowld 5y ago
        Then people will be empowered to enforce community standards instead of being held back by a State force that doesn't do its job but prevents them from doing theirs.
- Clubber 5y ago
  The worst part is it took 2 years and outside lawyers to rectify the situation. It's as if the justice system doesn't even care if it gets it right or wrong, it's just a mindless machine. "I don't care, not my job."
  - tartoran 5y ago
    This could be fixed with punishment for the responsible party.
  - smachiz 5y ago
    If you read the article, it wasn't outside lawyers. He was freed because one of the doctors in the mental facility (who originally declared him incompetent) had a change of opinion and actually tried to verify his claims and realized he was telling the truth. The innocence project is just trying to clear his name, after he went to live with his sister in Vermont.
    - Clubber 5y ago
      >If you read the article, it wasn't outside lawyers. He was freed because one of the doctors... I can't read the article because it's behind a paywall. I said he needed outside lawyers to rectify the situation. Just because he was freed doesn't mean his life is back in order. I suspect he has an arrest record, criminal conviction and a record of time served to contend with. Not to mention he hasn't worked in 2+ years. I'm sure his credit is toast. What happened to the place he used to live? I don't know if his voting rights have been restored. I would imagine a google search for his name would bring up at least one article on his conviction for employers to be deterred. Imagine what your life would look like if you just vanished from civilization for 2 years. The punishment is a lot more than just the incarceration.
      - skinnymuch 5y ago
        He was homeless with mental health issues. Obviously not the mental health BS the state said he had. This does not change the crux of your post, just some of the points.
- jimothyjames 5y ago
  because it's the only one we got
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jstummbillig 5y ago
  It is beyond me how people intelligent enough to hang around HN can pretend to have no understanding of how systems work. The justice system mostly works (relative to what its designed to do and the system it evolved out of, which you might both disagree with, but let's not complicate this). By the nature of what it handles (humans) and what you are (human) it will look abhorrently cruel when it fails. And, as with any system, it will definitely continue to fail as long as it is in place. Assessing an acceptable failure rate is kinda hard – but realistically there has to be one or you will just have to do without any system at all. So, more interestingly, the thing to look out for is whether a) there are institutions that report on system failures and b) we learn from those failures and correct them at all. As far as I can tell that generally happens in democratic countries. The next thing to look at is the speed in which we do those corrections. Could they be quicker? Sure. However, it seems like democracies are a tad slow about everything to people everywhere. Or, put differently, we are all wired a little bit too impatiently for how our democracies are currently designed. I feel that's good thing, constantly scrutinising our systems, keeping them on their toes and improving as we go.
  - rabboRubble 5y ago
    the issue for me isn't that a mistake was made, the issue is that the parties responsible for the mistake conspired in secret without official record to cover up their error, and left the man dumped in a homeless shelter with fifty cents.
    - jstummbillig 5y ago
      Agreed. What happened here is absolutely horrific.
    - pas 5y ago
      This happens "all the time". Taking responsibility is not 'in vogue' nowadays. (Prime examples are the lasts president. Obama was big on cracking down on whistleblowers. Orange explicitly claimed many times that managing stuff is not his responsibility, he has people for that.)
  - 5y ago
plibither8 5y ago
> That led the state hospital’s attorney to have a police detective take Spriestersbach’s fingerprints. They didn’t match the ones they had on file for Castleberry. Officials also compared photos of the two men — again, not a match. This is more than infuriating, that in the two years that Spriestersbach was wrongfully held, they never thought of matching fingerprints, or even photos? IANAL but the lack of such a basic level of background check like this is criminal.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  Kind of thing that happens when you let people do what they want without reprecussions.
- iJohnDoe 5y ago
  This is also peculiar because they could have rubbed his nose in it after hearing him saying he was the wrong guy for the hundredth time with, “See this photo, this is you!” “Oh, wait. Shit!” I’m guessing this did occur at some point behind the scenes and it caused them to cover it up even more.
danesparza 5y ago
We need to take away qualified immunity (which incorrectly protects the police officer involved from any kind of prosecution). Next, the police officer needs to face charges for his role in this. He failed in his duty to the community. Finally, the police department needs to be held accountable for their role and pay damages to this man.
- pempem 5y ago
  And his lawyer, the judge, the mental institution and doctors in it.
- dghf 5y ago
  > We need to take away qualified immunity (which incorrectly protects the police officer involved from any kind of prosecution). Not a lawyer, but I thought qualified immunity gave protection from civil liability, not criminal.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Civil is a lower bar than criminal so removing QI and and making the officers personally (in reality they'll all just buy insurance like doctors do, some do this already) is simply a step in the right direction (equality under law being said direction). If you aren't found to be on the hook by a civil court you basically can't be found guilty by a criminal one (barring very specific statutes or legal precedents that are relevant to the facts in question).
    - papercrane 5y ago
      You're talking about two different things. QI has nothing to do with the level of proof needed (preponderance of evidence vs. reasonable doubt.) Qualified Immunity only exists in civil litigation and has no bearing on criminal cases.
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        Correct. But if you can't even take someone to civil court you have no chance of criminal charges sticking (barring some specific statute or precedent to the contrary)
FridayoLeary 5y ago
I thought this stuff stopped happening in the 1960s.
corpMaverick 5y ago
Surely this happened in some third world country. right ? No. It happened in Hawaii. And the actual person was already in prison in Alaska.
sdunwoody 5y ago
This whole thing is pretty depressing (and would make me pretty angry if I lived in the USA). But I was even a bit shocked in the first paragraph: >He woke up to a police officer arresting him for violating the city’s ban on lying down in public places. Is that legitimately something that can happen? If so, find it mind boggling that you could be arrested in America for falling asleep on the pavement/sidewalk!?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Probably. People don't like to see the homeless around their nice little neighborhoods so they come up with all sorts of weird laws to harass them with.
  - sdunwoody 5y ago
    I find it really nasty. I visited Los Angeles a couple of years back, one of the first places we went was a McDonalds. Some guy was dozing sat at a table (with a coffee in front of him). A cop came up to him and told him he'd be reprimanded if he caught him napping like that again. In all my life living in the UK I've honestly never witnessed something like that. It may seem minor, but seeing an armed cop come up to someone and reprimand them for dozing off? I have no idea why a waiter couldn't have dealt with that. It's not like the McDonalds was even full or anything. On top of this, the advertising boards saying stuff like "No homeless shelter in our community, keep it safe!" was just completely lacking in compassion. I think a lot of people out there just don't see homeless people as deserving of empathy. At least, that's the impression I get. I also find it profoundly ironic that America is supposedly the "land of the free", but you can get arrested/in trouble for: - Drinking in public (even in parks or at the beach) - Sleeping in public (apparently) - Jaywalking - Eating on public transport I just don't understand all these weird and arbitrary rules they have out there.
    - tqi 5y ago
      The UK is far from immune to this type of behavior. "The Vagrancy Act was passed in the summer of 1824, which means it is now just shy of its 200th birthday. And if it held any relevance then, it certainly doesn’t now. At its core, The Vagrancy Act is a way to punish people “in any deserted or unoccupied building, or in the open air, or under a tent, or in any cart or waggon, not having any visible means of subsistence”. Essentially, it criminalises homelessness. For homeless people, both begging and rough sleeping are things out of their control, and the Act does little to get to the root of why people are homeless in the first place." https://centrepoint.org.uk/about-us/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-vagrancy-act/ https://centrepoint.org.uk/about-us/blog/everything-you-need... Also: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/nov/12/new-home-office-rules-on-removing-foreign-rough-sleepers-from-uk-face-legal-challenge https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/nov/12/new-home-off...
vmception 5y ago
Although this could happen elsewhere in the US, as it has before, people should really take a closer look at Hawaii. The standards of legal review are primitive, along side many other administrative aspects, no matter how much residents will try to convince you otherwise. One should also not discount prejudice as a factor here in the treatment, specifically towards the dominant groups from US/Asia mainlands.
macintux 5y ago
Kevin Strickland has been in prison for 43 years for a crime he didn’t commit. Our justice system is simply broken. https://nypost.com/2021/05/11/man-imprisoned-43-years-for-triple-murder-is-innocent-prosecutors/ https://nypost.com/2021/05/11/man-imprisoned-43-years-for-tr...
- tines 5y ago
  I don't think individual cases like these prove anything about the American justice system at large. In any system run by humans that is large enough, there will be mistakes or abuses committed by individuals or small groups, but this doesn't make any strong implications about the design of the system overall. (Of course, it may really be broken like you're saying, it's just that I don't think a few cases like these prove it.)
  - pempem 5y ago
    (Unless you're the one robbed of your 43 years or 2 years of life while continuously claiming - correctly - your innocence). Its beyond Kafkaesque.
    - tines 5y ago
      So a system has to be perfect or else it is Kafkaesque? Isn't there a gradient between them?
      - SerLava 5y ago
        You're the only one inventing a false binary. The US legal system locks up more people than any country on earth, and the majority of its prisoners did not do anything morally wrong. Most of them didn't even go to trial, and a huge number have not even been charged. It is so blatantly corrupt and psychotic a system, it's quite honestly ignorant to even compare it to any notion of "perfect". "Kafkaesque" is going easy on it. It's objectively the extension of chattel slavery in this country. It's a crime against humanity.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sjg007 5y ago
Kafkaesque.
user982 5y ago
That's quite the punchline in the article. For a more malicious case, read about Adrian Schoolcraft (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft) who, as retaliation for blowing the whistle on NYPD malfeasance, was raided, abducted, and forcibly committed/restrained in a psychiatric facility.
mabbo 5y ago
This entire story is so crazy it sounds like it could only be fiction. Actually, this would make an incredible plot for an episode of 'Law and Order' or whatever today's clone of that show is. "But how could the murder weapon have Castleberry's fingerprints on it when we know he's been in a psychiatric hospital for the last 2 years?" "Maybe he snuck out, and in his psychotic state killed someone. He wouldn't be criminally culpable, but the hospital might be." "What, then he crossed the entire city undetected, killed the victim, and got back into the hospital all without being noticed? I don't buy it. And besides, he's so doped up on that Haldol stuff, he doesn't even know his own name. He was catatonic when saw him."
- KerryJones 5y ago
  I think these things happen more frequently than we like to imagine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment
- tallies 5y ago
  Similar to the plot of the Swedish film 'The Night Visitor' with Max von Sydow
charles_f 5y ago
> a “secret meeting” followed. There is no court record of that meeting, which Brown said may have been because officials wanted to avoid public embarrassment. And because we surely don't want to be embarrassed, everything will be done to forget about it, no change will be made to the process, no consequence or probation for the judge or any of the doctors. Without admission of guilt there can be no remission, but that, the justice system seems to believe true only for criminals.
AlbertCory 5y ago
For anyone saying "the system is broken" a challenge: Provide a design for some system that is not broken and never will be. You can't stop at "at least fix it so this doesn't happen." The most important question for you is: how will this system be staffed? Can non-college-educated people be hired? Will it be unionized? How much will the staff be paid, and can you attract the sort of staff you want with that salary? Or will you get TSA-level people? How will disputes be adjudicated? Via civil lawsuits, arbitration boards, or what? Will the heads of it be elected or appointed? The point of this is that "the system" doesn't exist as pages in a textbook. It also doesn't exist in Denmark. It exists in the real US. Some systems work out better than others, but they all bear the thumbprints of actual hands.
- aaron-santos 5y ago
  As much as it's nice to provide a solution along with evidence that something's broken, it isn't a requirement. Knowing something is broken is a different skill than fixing it. It's the reason we have mechanics, doctors, and QA to name a few. I'm willing to bet there are much more socio-political creative types that can imagine systems much better than I can. After all, I'm just a layperson in that domain. Challenging lay people is exactly as absurd as challenging them to come up with a fix for their join pain before consulting a doctor.
  - munificent 5y ago
    > Knowing something is broken is a different skill than fixing it. This is a fair point. But I think many people saying "the system is broken" implicitly or explicitly advocate a fix by throwing out the entire system. Those people often don't seem to realize that "no system" is a system too, and you need to compare that system's emergent behavior to the current system before you can make a wise choice.
    - AlbertCory 5y ago
      Exactly. It's fair to propose minor tweaks to a system while (implicitly) admitting that it's fine otherwise. It's quite something else to say "the system is broken" while having no idea whatsoever how some new system would avoid all those problems.
JackFr 5y ago
Lawyers of HN, what is the standard to establish a person is who they say are (or who the police say they are?). How is it possible that this guy wouldn’t be able to cash a check or get a document notarized yet is jailed on the basis of one guy going “yeah, that’s him.”
voz_ 5y ago
Living in California, you wouldn't know we had mental facilities...
CivBase 5y ago
> For speaking out, Spriestersbach was deemed “problematic” and given antipsychotic medications, including Haldol, which made him despondent and catatonic. > The doctor concluded the amount of psychiatric medications he was on was “well beyond therapeutic levels, which is why he was acting catatonic and his expressions vacant,” Dumas-Griffith said in a sworn statement to the court. > Spriestersbach was prescribed powerful drugs, the doctor added, in “an effort to make him ‘competent’ when in reality he had always been competent.” This may be a bit of a tangent, but the willingness of many medical professionals to prescribe mentally altering drugs is extremely alarming to me and it only seems to be getting worse. Even outside the prison system it seems trivial to convince a doctor you have a mental disorder - especially if you're convinced of it yourself. I know several people who went through hell because they were misdiagnosed with a mental disorder or prescribed far more than what was appropriate. Pills are such a convenient solution for everyone involved; it's easy to see why they're abused. Of course I recognize that many people actually do suffer from such disorders and I want them to receive whatever treatment they need, but it's important to remember mentally altering drugs are very dangerous and their use should not be taken lightly.
openasocket 5y ago
I'm surprised no one is bringing up sanctions for the psychologists involved. In the US legal system, you can be found unfit to stand trial, as this man was. Which means you are involuntarily committed to a mental facility and treated until you are deemed fit to stand trial. This is meant to prevent the state from prosecuting someone completely incapable of understanding what is going on and defending themselves. As a result, being found fit to stand trial is a very low bar to reach. It essentially means you know what a judge is, what a jury is, what a lawyer is, and what you are being charged with. You can be found fit to stand trial even with fairly serious delusions. I'm shocked he was considered unfit to stand trial simply because he claimed to be a different person.
- gowld 5y ago
  How would "sent to jail" (with likely eve more abusive "mental health care" for "delusions") be any better than "sent to hospital"
  - openasocket 5y ago
    In this case, had he not been declared mentally unfit, he might not have gone to jail either. Being declared mentally unfit basically pauses the trial and puts the defendant into treatment until they are declared fit. Your abilities to appeal the decision, try to get the charges drop, or access legal assistance is very limited. It's an extraordinary step that shouldn't be taken lightly.
- fencepost 5y ago
  If he has an attorney interested he might be able to pursue malpractice claims, particularly considering that they medicated him against his will.
- lozenge 5y ago
  Was it the drugs that made him genuinely unfit to stand trial?
  - openasocket 5y ago
iJohnDoe 5y ago
The judge, the doctors, and everyone else that failed to do even the most basic searches or confirmations of anyone’s identity should be put in jail in this case. I’m also surprised this happened in Hawaii. Are they so overrun with crime and cases that they couldn’t handle doing their most basic duties to confirm identities? Not that they would have any excuse.
- unanswered 5y ago
  > The judge, the doctors, and everyone else that failed to do even the most basic searches or confirmations of anyone’s identity should be put in jail in this case. No, they should be put in mental institutions under the name Castleberry with strict instructions to the medical staff that they are delusional and misstating their own identity.
opdahl 5y ago
The last line in this article is the most insane one of them all. > ... Bento, who did not respond to a request for comment, said officials in that office had instructed him not to hand over any documents related to Castleberry’s 2006 drug case, including all records filed after May 2017 that actually pertained to Spriestersbach. > Spriestersbach was not entitled to the documents, officials said. > The reason: He was not the defendant in that case. He was not Thomas Castleberry. They are saying he is not allowed to get the documents for the case which he was the main suspect and subsequently hospitalized for since the documents for the case is for the other person. Even though it happened to him and not the other person. I'm dumbfounded.
- cududa 5y ago
  Wait to have your mind blown further. In Missouri if you’re exonerated for a crime via someone else pleading guilty, DNA, etc and have used up all your appeals you still have to serve out your sentence, even if it’s life in prison https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-are-wrongly-convicted-people-still-imprisoned-in-missouri/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-are-wrongly-convicted-peopl...
  - devoutsalsa 5y ago
    WTF.
  - javiramos 5y ago
    Heartbreaking. The US criminal justice system is a shame.
    - oblio 5y ago
      I don't think it's a shame. It's intentional. Considering the fact that the US prison population is heavily skewed in one direction, that the US has the highest per capita prison population, that prison populations are used as forced labor, I'm quite convinced it's intentional. The small number of people that are accidentally targeted unintentionally are just collateral damage nobody really cares about.
eth0up 5y ago
I've had the honor of knowing someone - someone rather extraordinary - once dubiously confined to Marcy State Hospital. The stories I've heard influenced a bit of feeble research on my part which chanced upon James Bailey Silkman, a prisoner of the closely related Utica Asylum. Depending on one's perception (or fetish) of one's domination over another, the story is a rare victory over such a terrible nightmare. Silkman went on, after his liberation from that hive of arbitrary illness, to apply his legal talents toward freeing others wrongfully held captive there. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bailey_Silkman https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bailey_Silkman
helipad 5y ago
This is my biggest irrational fear. That one day I'll get locked up and everything I say and do will only convince them more that they're right. Jon Ronson meets Kafka.
z3t4 5y ago
Sometimes there is a trouble maker that only make petty crimes. Never anything serious enough for jail time, just someone very annoying. And when he/she get sent away for something they did not do, noone will complain. Not saying he was that guy, but it happens frequently.
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  This looks like an awful thing to say in this comment thread
Svperstar 5y ago
My degree is in Psychology and I worked in the mental health field for years before switching to IT full time. The system is broken in many ways. Basically both Republican and Democrat parties fund the absolute federal bare minimums. In those jobs you are supposed to document every last minute of your 9/5 job and if you can't prove you are active 75% of the time("productivity rating") your ass is out of the door. My current IT job where I keep a business making millions of dollars running I don't have to justify my time at all. I'm so glad I don't work in mental health anymore. Driving people out of the industry is a goal of the regulations IMO.
ransom1538 5y ago
"For speaking out, Spriestersbach was deemed “problematic” and given antipsychotic medications, including Haldol, which made him despondent and catatonic." My best friend's father was a guard at Folsom prison. When I was a kid he would always remind us that the worse prisoners were the truly innocent ones. All the old timer guards knew which prisoners were innocent just based on their mannerisms.
hootbootscoot 5y ago
that's nuts.
- hootbootscoot 5y ago
  I mean totally crazy. Nightmare stuff
effingwewt 5y ago
I remember an episode of Archer where Mallory says 'I swear, if you throw that computer on the floor one more time, you'll wake up in a mental ward with total amnesia under someone else's name!' I said out loud 'God Damn', it was terrifying. To think this is worse and actually happened.

302 points by jbegley 5y ago

https://archive.is/Rg64w https://archive.is/Rg64w

Nevertheless, the officer insisted that Spriestersbach was actually Castleberry and took him to jail. He was fingerprinted and had his photo taken, generating records that could have been used to prove he wasn’t Castleberry, the Innocence Project asserts. It's beyond me how anyone has one iota of faith in the US judicial system anymore.

slackfan 5y ago
This could have happened anywhere in the world, the US is hardly unique.
- DecoPerson 5y ago
  I have faith in a situation like this being far less likely to occur in Australia.
  - zepto 5y ago
    Why? I see no reason to believe Australia’s social problems aren’t as bad as as the US.
  - satori99 5y ago
    Don't be too sure. Very similar things have happened in Australia before, and no doubt will again https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelia_Rau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelia_Rau
  - UnpossibleJim 5y ago
    https://www.mondaq.com/australia/crime/893326/imprisoning-the-innocent-the-causes-of-wrongful-convictions-in-australia https://www.mondaq.com/australia/crime/893326/imprisoning-th... There isn't a large Innocence Project (though a small one has popped up and should be supported) in Australia and there are overzealous prosecutors in Australia, just as in a lot of places (though the competition in America seems to be exceptionally strong). Faith is nice and all, but it doesn't free the innocent. There's a link to support Australia's innocence project, maybe tithe.
  - hilbert42 5y ago
    It's not yet as bad but it's becoming more and more like the US every day. Australian politicians rarely create original law, they either ape laws from elsewhere or are forced into copying laws from the country they're trying to do trade deals with. Thus Australian law is becoming more and more like that of the US. For that matter, things won't improve in any anglophone country until they ditch the adversarial system for the inquisitorial one that has a better chance of getting to the truth of a case. But don't hold your breath, that won't happen anytime soon.
  - drno123 5y ago
    With the current lockdown and incoming martial law, it seems that you already live in a dystopian universe.
  - wil421 5y ago
    Here you go. IIRC Australia hasn’t been side kind to it’s Indigenous population. https://obriensolicitors.com.au/case-studies-unlawful-imprisonment-false-arrest/ https://obriensolicitors.com.au/case-studies-unlawful-impris...
- pempem 5y ago
  Then really its a global problem we need to figure out. Every day on HN we have debates about the trading of privacy for data for a more secure world. This is an indication that our efforts are broken, because people. But also that those people held a lot of different roles, in a diversity of offices across our judicial system.
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  How can you possibly make such a claim with any supporting evidence that it could be "anywhere"? EDIT: Confused "anywhere" with "everywhere". I'll take my F in logic today and show myself out.
  - TheFreim 5y ago
    Does someone need to provide a source proving that mistakes happen outside the United States?
  - sophacles 5y ago
    Actually, I think your doubt needs some sources. The foundational principle is that there exists at least one of: * a human that has never once made any mistake whatsoever * a system composed of humans who are mistake capable but the system itself actually makes no mistakes. Such a thing seems impossible - if you can point to the existence of such a thing, your doubt is worth entertaining, otherwise it's just contrarianism.
- tonyarkles 5y ago
  Here's, among others, one of the absolutely wild examples from Canada: https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/ResearchPublications/202077E#a2-5 https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/Resear... Multiple people convicted by evidence provided by a quack of a doctor used as an Expert Witness by the crown.
- tunesmith 5y ago
  Therefore what? Bad thing happens in the US, yes that's true, but well, that same bad thing happens in other places too, so therefore.... what?
  - staticman2 5y ago
    Don't get me wrong, i find this story outrageous, but whether our system is doing comparatively well or comparatively poor seems like useful empirical information. For one thing, if another country handles things better, that shows humans are capable of improving their system.
    - tunesmith 5y ago
      Ah yes, that does help. Too often I see people make statements like that and it just comes across as fatalistic, like an attempt to dissipate the will of others to do anything about it at all. I wonder what the other countries are that do better, and what they do differently. Maybe there should be a mandated evidence review every x years, irrespective of sentence.
  - mucholove 5y ago
    I love this attitude. In life, so many people are happy to reference themselves to a very poor standard. For mang Dominicans, it’s OK in the case of Dominican Republic to be the third country in Latin America for so many statistic—automobile accidents, coronavirus deaths, you name it. This is unacceptable to me. Pick the highest bar—and if the highest bar isn’t good enough—set a new standard. Sure, we will have failures—but we need to push the envelope and do “good” not “better than worse”.
  - ars 5y ago
    So therefore humans are humans. If it was unique you can point to what makes it unique - but if it happens everywhere, then it's because humans are humans. If you don't understand the source of the problem you have no change of fixing it.
- ModernMech 5y ago
  The US is definitely unique in that it confines the largest number people against their will in the world, in terms of both per capita and raw population numbers. That context cannot be lost when examining the cruelty of the system. It's obviously at an extreme end of the spectrum, so treating it like "any other country" doesn't hold up. The system is designed to target and exploit vulnerable, poor people and turn them into productive assets. Once it has them, getting them out can be incredibly difficult because they become so profitable. Our penal system is not designed for rehabilitation but for profit generation.
- lozenge 5y ago
  Here's one (sort of) from the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal Hundreds jailed or fined due to a faulty computer system blaming them - no other evidence - Post Office covered it up repeatedly - victims still not fully compensated.
pstuart 5y ago
It's a legal system, not a justice system.
- harpiaharpyja 5y ago
  I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with that statement. I think justice should be considered the entire purpose of a legal system. And if it isn't working, it should be fixed. Accountability sounds like a good place to start. If an official causes harm to another person through negligence or otherwise they should be held accountable to the same standards as anyone else.
  - SerLava 5y ago
    They're just saying our legal system doesn't try to consistently create justice.
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      It definintely tries (that's sort of the point of it). ... but it doesn't always succeed for multiple reasons. One of the most common being that it's not always possible to grant all parties justice. Sometimes, courts have to evaluate a zero-sum situation and decide how cost will be shared, so there's no way to move forward without constraining someone's rights. And people's definitions of "justice" vary, and are far more often grounded in emotion than coherent philosophy... It's not always even logically possible to grant all parties justice. The useful distinction to keep in mind is that the legal system will follow the law, but whether the outcome of that is "justice" is a subjective evaluation more than a measurable concept.
      - samatman 5y ago
        > It definintely tries (that's sort of the point of it) This is probably argument from definition (unclear) but in any case, it's a statement which needs backing up. To cite a usual boogeyman for such discussions, the Soviet court system under Stalin wasn't at all interested in justice. It's not clear to me that the incentives in the US court system align with justice more than accidentally. As in, sometimes the guilty go to prison, as a side effect of the prosecutor's office needing to clear their docket and present good numbers to keep their budget up. Very occasionally, the innocent are cleared of crimes, and even more occasionally than that their lives aren't ruined in the process; defense attorneys want to look good as well.
shadowgovt 5y ago
Mostly because these stories are incredibly rare. The Innocence Project does excellent work to try and prevent people like this from falling through the cracks.
- Causality1 5y ago
  The stories are rare. We don't know how rare the events are. What percentage of people do the Innocence Project manage to review? It's certainly not everyone.
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    Absolutely not. The high imprisonment rate and the number of people imprisoned without a process is a clear symptom.
- KerryJones 5y ago
  There are organizations dedicated to handling the repeated abuse of mental health facilities in similar ways here -- not the legal aspect, but the mental health. "Incredibly rare" feels like it's playing into the narrative of "oops, this is rare". So, I would argue, "one of many": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment
- dehrmann 5y ago
  And if everyone who dropped the ball on this got a year in prison for it, they'd be even more rare.
  - toiletaccount 5y ago
    thats a good way to gum up the system so nothing ever gets done.
    - gowld 5y ago
      Then people will be empowered to enforce community standards instead of being held back by a State force that doesn't do its job but prevents them from doing theirs.
Clubber 5y ago
The worst part is it took 2 years and outside lawyers to rectify the situation. It's as if the justice system doesn't even care if it gets it right or wrong, it's just a mindless machine. "I don't care, not my job."
- tartoran 5y ago
  This could be fixed with punishment for the responsible party.
- smachiz 5y ago
  If you read the article, it wasn't outside lawyers. He was freed because one of the doctors in the mental facility (who originally declared him incompetent) had a change of opinion and actually tried to verify his claims and realized he was telling the truth. The innocence project is just trying to clear his name, after he went to live with his sister in Vermont.
  - Clubber 5y ago
    >If you read the article, it wasn't outside lawyers. He was freed because one of the doctors... I can't read the article because it's behind a paywall. I said he needed outside lawyers to rectify the situation. Just because he was freed doesn't mean his life is back in order. I suspect he has an arrest record, criminal conviction and a record of time served to contend with. Not to mention he hasn't worked in 2+ years. I'm sure his credit is toast. What happened to the place he used to live? I don't know if his voting rights have been restored. I would imagine a google search for his name would bring up at least one article on his conviction for employers to be deterred. Imagine what your life would look like if you just vanished from civilization for 2 years. The punishment is a lot more than just the incarceration.
    - skinnymuch 5y ago
      He was homeless with mental health issues. Obviously not the mental health BS the state said he had. This does not change the crux of your post, just some of the points.
jimothyjames 5y ago
because it's the only one we got
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jstummbillig 5y ago
It is beyond me how people intelligent enough to hang around HN can pretend to have no understanding of how systems work. The justice system mostly works (relative to what its designed to do and the system it evolved out of, which you might both disagree with, but let's not complicate this). By the nature of what it handles (humans) and what you are (human) it will look abhorrently cruel when it fails. And, as with any system, it will definitely continue to fail as long as it is in place. Assessing an acceptable failure rate is kinda hard – but realistically there has to be one or you will just have to do without any system at all. So, more interestingly, the thing to look out for is whether a) there are institutions that report on system failures and b) we learn from those failures and correct them at all. As far as I can tell that generally happens in democratic countries. The next thing to look at is the speed in which we do those corrections. Could they be quicker? Sure. However, it seems like democracies are a tad slow about everything to people everywhere. Or, put differently, we are all wired a little bit too impatiently for how our democracies are currently designed. I feel that's good thing, constantly scrutinising our systems, keeping them on their toes and improving as we go.
- rabboRubble 5y ago
  the issue for me isn't that a mistake was made, the issue is that the parties responsible for the mistake conspired in secret without official record to cover up their error, and left the man dumped in a homeless shelter with fifty cents.
  - jstummbillig 5y ago
    Agreed. What happened here is absolutely horrific.
  - pas 5y ago
    This happens "all the time". Taking responsibility is not 'in vogue' nowadays. (Prime examples are the lasts president. Obama was big on cracking down on whistleblowers. Orange explicitly claimed many times that managing stuff is not his responsibility, he has people for that.)
- 5y ago

plibither8 5y ago

> That led the state hospital’s attorney to have a police detective take Spriestersbach’s fingerprints. They didn’t match the ones they had on file for Castleberry. Officials also compared photos of the two men — again, not a match. This is more than infuriating, that in the two years that Spriestersbach was wrongfully held, they never thought of matching fingerprints, or even photos? IANAL but the lack of such a basic level of background check like this is criminal.

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
Kind of thing that happens when you let people do what they want without reprecussions.
iJohnDoe 5y ago
This is also peculiar because they could have rubbed his nose in it after hearing him saying he was the wrong guy for the hundredth time with, “See this photo, this is you!” “Oh, wait. Shit!” I’m guessing this did occur at some point behind the scenes and it caused them to cover it up even more.

danesparza 5y ago

We need to take away qualified immunity (which incorrectly protects the police officer involved from any kind of prosecution). Next, the police officer needs to face charges for his role in this. He failed in his duty to the community. Finally, the police department needs to be held accountable for their role and pay damages to this man.

pempem 5y ago
And his lawyer, the judge, the mental institution and doctors in it.
dghf 5y ago
> We need to take away qualified immunity (which incorrectly protects the police officer involved from any kind of prosecution). Not a lawyer, but I thought qualified immunity gave protection from civil liability, not criminal.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Civil is a lower bar than criminal so removing QI and and making the officers personally (in reality they'll all just buy insurance like doctors do, some do this already) is simply a step in the right direction (equality under law being said direction). If you aren't found to be on the hook by a civil court you basically can't be found guilty by a criminal one (barring very specific statutes or legal precedents that are relevant to the facts in question).
  - papercrane 5y ago
    You're talking about two different things. QI has nothing to do with the level of proof needed (preponderance of evidence vs. reasonable doubt.) Qualified Immunity only exists in civil litigation and has no bearing on criminal cases.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      Correct. But if you can't even take someone to civil court you have no chance of criminal charges sticking (barring some specific statute or precedent to the contrary)

FridayoLeary 5y ago

I thought this stuff stopped happening in the 1960s.

corpMaverick 5y ago

Surely this happened in some third world country. right ? No. It happened in Hawaii. And the actual person was already in prison in Alaska.

sdunwoody 5y ago

This whole thing is pretty depressing (and would make me pretty angry if I lived in the USA). But I was even a bit shocked in the first paragraph: >He woke up to a police officer arresting him for violating the city’s ban on lying down in public places. Is that legitimately something that can happen? If so, find it mind boggling that you could be arrested in America for falling asleep on the pavement/sidewalk!?

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
Probably. People don't like to see the homeless around their nice little neighborhoods so they come up with all sorts of weird laws to harass them with.
- sdunwoody 5y ago
  I find it really nasty. I visited Los Angeles a couple of years back, one of the first places we went was a McDonalds. Some guy was dozing sat at a table (with a coffee in front of him). A cop came up to him and told him he'd be reprimanded if he caught him napping like that again. In all my life living in the UK I've honestly never witnessed something like that. It may seem minor, but seeing an armed cop come up to someone and reprimand them for dozing off? I have no idea why a waiter couldn't have dealt with that. It's not like the McDonalds was even full or anything. On top of this, the advertising boards saying stuff like "No homeless shelter in our community, keep it safe!" was just completely lacking in compassion. I think a lot of people out there just don't see homeless people as deserving of empathy. At least, that's the impression I get. I also find it profoundly ironic that America is supposedly the "land of the free", but you can get arrested/in trouble for: - Drinking in public (even in parks or at the beach) - Sleeping in public (apparently) - Jaywalking - Eating on public transport I just don't understand all these weird and arbitrary rules they have out there.
  - tqi 5y ago
    The UK is far from immune to this type of behavior. "The Vagrancy Act was passed in the summer of 1824, which means it is now just shy of its 200th birthday. And if it held any relevance then, it certainly doesn’t now. At its core, The Vagrancy Act is a way to punish people “in any deserted or unoccupied building, or in the open air, or under a tent, or in any cart or waggon, not having any visible means of subsistence”. Essentially, it criminalises homelessness. For homeless people, both begging and rough sleeping are things out of their control, and the Act does little to get to the root of why people are homeless in the first place." https://centrepoint.org.uk/about-us/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-vagrancy-act/ https://centrepoint.org.uk/about-us/blog/everything-you-need... Also: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/nov/12/new-home-office-rules-on-removing-foreign-rough-sleepers-from-uk-face-legal-challenge https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/nov/12/new-home-off...

vmception 5y ago

Although this could happen elsewhere in the US, as it has before, people should really take a closer look at Hawaii. The standards of legal review are primitive, along side many other administrative aspects, no matter how much residents will try to convince you otherwise. One should also not discount prejudice as a factor here in the treatment, specifically towards the dominant groups from US/Asia mainlands.

macintux 5y ago

Kevin Strickland has been in prison for 43 years for a crime he didn’t commit. Our justice system is simply broken. https://nypost.com/2021/05/11/man-imprisoned-43-years-for-triple-murder-is-innocent-prosecutors/ https://nypost.com/2021/05/11/man-imprisoned-43-years-for-tr...

tines 5y ago
I don't think individual cases like these prove anything about the American justice system at large. In any system run by humans that is large enough, there will be mistakes or abuses committed by individuals or small groups, but this doesn't make any strong implications about the design of the system overall. (Of course, it may really be broken like you're saying, it's just that I don't think a few cases like these prove it.)
- pempem 5y ago
  (Unless you're the one robbed of your 43 years or 2 years of life while continuously claiming - correctly - your innocence). Its beyond Kafkaesque.
  - tines 5y ago
    So a system has to be perfect or else it is Kafkaesque? Isn't there a gradient between them?
    - SerLava 5y ago
      You're the only one inventing a false binary. The US legal system locks up more people than any country on earth, and the majority of its prisoners did not do anything morally wrong. Most of them didn't even go to trial, and a huge number have not even been charged. It is so blatantly corrupt and psychotic a system, it's quite honestly ignorant to even compare it to any notion of "perfect". "Kafkaesque" is going easy on it. It's objectively the extension of chattel slavery in this country. It's a crime against humanity.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

sjg007 5y ago

Kafkaesque.

user982 5y ago

That's quite the punchline in the article. For a more malicious case, read about Adrian Schoolcraft (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft) who, as retaliation for blowing the whistle on NYPD malfeasance, was raided, abducted, and forcibly committed/restrained in a psychiatric facility.

mabbo 5y ago

This entire story is so crazy it sounds like it could only be fiction. Actually, this would make an incredible plot for an episode of 'Law and Order' or whatever today's clone of that show is. "But how could the murder weapon have Castleberry's fingerprints on it when we know he's been in a psychiatric hospital for the last 2 years?" "Maybe he snuck out, and in his psychotic state killed someone. He wouldn't be criminally culpable, but the hospital might be." "What, then he crossed the entire city undetected, killed the victim, and got back into the hospital all without being noticed? I don't buy it. And besides, he's so doped up on that Haldol stuff, he doesn't even know his own name. He was catatonic when saw him."

KerryJones 5y ago
I think these things happen more frequently than we like to imagine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment
tallies 5y ago
Similar to the plot of the Swedish film 'The Night Visitor' with Max von Sydow

charles_f 5y ago

> a “secret meeting” followed. There is no court record of that meeting, which Brown said may have been because officials wanted to avoid public embarrassment. And because we surely don't want to be embarrassed, everything will be done to forget about it, no change will be made to the process, no consequence or probation for the judge or any of the doctors. Without admission of guilt there can be no remission, but that, the justice system seems to believe true only for criminals.

AlbertCory 5y ago

For anyone saying "the system is broken" a challenge: Provide a design for some system that is not broken and never will be. You can't stop at "at least fix it so this doesn't happen." The most important question for you is: how will this system be staffed? Can non-college-educated people be hired? Will it be unionized? How much will the staff be paid, and can you attract the sort of staff you want with that salary? Or will you get TSA-level people? How will disputes be adjudicated? Via civil lawsuits, arbitration boards, or what? Will the heads of it be elected or appointed? The point of this is that "the system" doesn't exist as pages in a textbook. It also doesn't exist in Denmark. It exists in the real US. Some systems work out better than others, but they all bear the thumbprints of actual hands.

aaron-santos 5y ago
As much as it's nice to provide a solution along with evidence that something's broken, it isn't a requirement. Knowing something is broken is a different skill than fixing it. It's the reason we have mechanics, doctors, and QA to name a few. I'm willing to bet there are much more socio-political creative types that can imagine systems much better than I can. After all, I'm just a layperson in that domain. Challenging lay people is exactly as absurd as challenging them to come up with a fix for their join pain before consulting a doctor.
- munificent 5y ago
  > Knowing something is broken is a different skill than fixing it. This is a fair point. But I think many people saying "the system is broken" implicitly or explicitly advocate a fix by throwing out the entire system. Those people often don't seem to realize that "no system" is a system too, and you need to compare that system's emergent behavior to the current system before you can make a wise choice.
  - AlbertCory 5y ago
    Exactly. It's fair to propose minor tweaks to a system while (implicitly) admitting that it's fine otherwise. It's quite something else to say "the system is broken" while having no idea whatsoever how some new system would avoid all those problems.

JackFr 5y ago

Lawyers of HN, what is the standard to establish a person is who they say are (or who the police say they are?). How is it possible that this guy wouldn’t be able to cash a check or get a document notarized yet is jailed on the basis of one guy going “yeah, that’s him.”

voz_ 5y ago

Living in California, you wouldn't know we had mental facilities...

CivBase 5y ago

> For speaking out, Spriestersbach was deemed “problematic” and given antipsychotic medications, including Haldol, which made him despondent and catatonic. > The doctor concluded the amount of psychiatric medications he was on was “well beyond therapeutic levels, which is why he was acting catatonic and his expressions vacant,” Dumas-Griffith said in a sworn statement to the court. > Spriestersbach was prescribed powerful drugs, the doctor added, in “an effort to make him ‘competent’ when in reality he had always been competent.” This may be a bit of a tangent, but the willingness of many medical professionals to prescribe mentally altering drugs is extremely alarming to me and it only seems to be getting worse. Even outside the prison system it seems trivial to convince a doctor you have a mental disorder - especially if you're convinced of it yourself. I know several people who went through hell because they were misdiagnosed with a mental disorder or prescribed far more than what was appropriate. Pills are such a convenient solution for everyone involved; it's easy to see why they're abused. Of course I recognize that many people actually do suffer from such disorders and I want them to receive whatever treatment they need, but it's important to remember mentally altering drugs are very dangerous and their use should not be taken lightly.

openasocket 5y ago

I'm surprised no one is bringing up sanctions for the psychologists involved. In the US legal system, you can be found unfit to stand trial, as this man was. Which means you are involuntarily committed to a mental facility and treated until you are deemed fit to stand trial. This is meant to prevent the state from prosecuting someone completely incapable of understanding what is going on and defending themselves. As a result, being found fit to stand trial is a very low bar to reach. It essentially means you know what a judge is, what a jury is, what a lawyer is, and what you are being charged with. You can be found fit to stand trial even with fairly serious delusions. I'm shocked he was considered unfit to stand trial simply because he claimed to be a different person.

gowld 5y ago
How would "sent to jail" (with likely eve more abusive "mental health care" for "delusions") be any better than "sent to hospital"
- openasocket 5y ago
  In this case, had he not been declared mentally unfit, he might not have gone to jail either. Being declared mentally unfit basically pauses the trial and puts the defendant into treatment until they are declared fit. Your abilities to appeal the decision, try to get the charges drop, or access legal assistance is very limited. It's an extraordinary step that shouldn't be taken lightly.
fencepost 5y ago
If he has an attorney interested he might be able to pursue malpractice claims, particularly considering that they medicated him against his will.
lozenge 5y ago
Was it the drugs that made him genuinely unfit to stand trial?
- openasocket 5y ago

iJohnDoe 5y ago

The judge, the doctors, and everyone else that failed to do even the most basic searches or confirmations of anyone’s identity should be put in jail in this case. I’m also surprised this happened in Hawaii. Are they so overrun with crime and cases that they couldn’t handle doing their most basic duties to confirm identities? Not that they would have any excuse.

unanswered 5y ago
> The judge, the doctors, and everyone else that failed to do even the most basic searches or confirmations of anyone’s identity should be put in jail in this case. No, they should be put in mental institutions under the name Castleberry with strict instructions to the medical staff that they are delusional and misstating their own identity.

opdahl 5y ago

The last line in this article is the most insane one of them all. > ... Bento, who did not respond to a request for comment, said officials in that office had instructed him not to hand over any documents related to Castleberry’s 2006 drug case, including all records filed after May 2017 that actually pertained to Spriestersbach. > Spriestersbach was not entitled to the documents, officials said. > The reason: He was not the defendant in that case. He was not Thomas Castleberry. They are saying he is not allowed to get the documents for the case which he was the main suspect and subsequently hospitalized for since the documents for the case is for the other person. Even though it happened to him and not the other person. I'm dumbfounded.

cududa 5y ago
Wait to have your mind blown further. In Missouri if you’re exonerated for a crime via someone else pleading guilty, DNA, etc and have used up all your appeals you still have to serve out your sentence, even if it’s life in prison https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-are-wrongly-convicted-people-still-imprisoned-in-missouri/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-are-wrongly-convicted-peopl...
- devoutsalsa 5y ago
  WTF.
- javiramos 5y ago
  Heartbreaking. The US criminal justice system is a shame.
  - oblio 5y ago
    I don't think it's a shame. It's intentional. Considering the fact that the US prison population is heavily skewed in one direction, that the US has the highest per capita prison population, that prison populations are used as forced labor, I'm quite convinced it's intentional. The small number of people that are accidentally targeted unintentionally are just collateral damage nobody really cares about.

eth0up 5y ago

I've had the honor of knowing someone - someone rather extraordinary - once dubiously confined to Marcy State Hospital. The stories I've heard influenced a bit of feeble research on my part which chanced upon James Bailey Silkman, a prisoner of the closely related Utica Asylum. Depending on one's perception (or fetish) of one's domination over another, the story is a rare victory over such a terrible nightmare. Silkman went on, after his liberation from that hive of arbitrary illness, to apply his legal talents toward freeing others wrongfully held captive there. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bailey_Silkman https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bailey_Silkman

helipad 5y ago

This is my biggest irrational fear. That one day I'll get locked up and everything I say and do will only convince them more that they're right. Jon Ronson meets Kafka.

z3t4 5y ago

Sometimes there is a trouble maker that only make petty crimes. Never anything serious enough for jail time, just someone very annoying. And when he/she get sent away for something they did not do, noone will complain. Not saying he was that guy, but it happens frequently.

skinnymuch 5y ago
This looks like an awful thing to say in this comment thread

Svperstar 5y ago

My degree is in Psychology and I worked in the mental health field for years before switching to IT full time. The system is broken in many ways. Basically both Republican and Democrat parties fund the absolute federal bare minimums. In those jobs you are supposed to document every last minute of your 9/5 job and if you can't prove you are active 75% of the time("productivity rating") your ass is out of the door. My current IT job where I keep a business making millions of dollars running I don't have to justify my time at all. I'm so glad I don't work in mental health anymore. Driving people out of the industry is a goal of the regulations IMO.

ransom1538 5y ago

"For speaking out, Spriestersbach was deemed “problematic” and given antipsychotic medications, including Haldol, which made him despondent and catatonic." My best friend's father was a guard at Folsom prison. When I was a kid he would always remind us that the worse prisoners were the truly innocent ones. All the old timer guards knew which prisoners were innocent just based on their mannerisms.

hootbootscoot 5y ago

that's nuts.

hootbootscoot 5y ago
I mean totally crazy. Nightmare stuff

effingwewt 5y ago

I remember an episode of Archer where Mallory says 'I swear, if you throw that computer on the floor one more time, you'll wake up in a mental ward with total amnesia under someone else's name!' I said out loud 'God Damn', it was terrifying. To think this is worse and actually happened.