He is set to receive a $975,000 payout from the City and County of Honolulu and may receive an additional $200,000 from the state. The case stems from a 2011 incident when Spriestersbach, who was homeless and sleeping at Kawananakoa Middle School, was woken by an officer and asked for his name. According to the lawsuit, he would not give a first name and provided only his grandfather's last name, Castleberry.
The officer found a 2009 warrant for Thomas Castleberry and arrested Spriestersbach for the outstanding warrant, though Spriestersbach didn't show up to his court date and the warrant was later dropped. In 2015, an HPD officer approached Spriestersbach after hours in 'A'ala Park, where he had been sleeping, and he initially refused to give his name but eventually did so. Officers took his fingerprints and confirmed he was not Thomas Castleberry, but police misidentified Spriestersbach as Castleberry in two previous interactions and did not correct the record, according to the lawsuit.
On the day of the 2017 arrest, Spriestersbach was waiting for food outside Safe Haven in Chinatown and fell asleep on the sidewalk while waiting in line. He believed at the time that he was being arrested for violating Honolulu's restrictions on sitting or lying on public sidewalks, not for an outstanding warrant tied to another man, court filings show. Thomas Castleberry had already been incarcerated in Alaska since 2016 at the time of Spriestersbach's 2017 arrest, and Spriestersbach spent four months at O'ahu Community Correctional Center and more than two years at the Hawaii State Psychiatric Hospital.
Spriestersbach filed a lawsuit in 2021 alleging false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, abuse of process, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The lawsuit alleges authorities had access to fingerprints and photographs that could have definitively distinguished Spriestersbach and Thomas Castleberry but failed to properly compare or act on that information.