Spristers Box Legal Team - The Same Thing Happened Again

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

In two thousand 15 Spristers bok was picked up by the police, arrested as castlebery and released once the error was caught. Remarkably, it was never fixed. The record continued to include spristers bock's actual social security number and date of birth,. along with thomas stebery's state identification number. His lawyers know this because, unbelievably, the same thing happened again. Yet again, no one thought to correct the record. It was matter of time, perhaps, before the mistake would stick.

The more he insisted that his name was Joshua, the more delusional he came to be seen.

Journalist Robert Kolker tells us the remarkable story of Joshua Spriestersbach, a homeless man who wound up serving more than two years in a Honolulu jail for crimes committed by someone else.

It was a case of mistaken identity that developed into “a slow-motion game of hot potato between the police, the courts, the jails and the hospitals,” Mr. Kolker writes. He delves into how homelessness and mental illness shaped Mr. Spriestersbach’s adult life, two factors that led him into a situation in which he had little control — a bureaucratic wormhole that commandeered and consumed two and a half years of his life.

This story was written by Robert Kolker and recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.