The Sunday Read: 'Why Was Joshua Held for More Than Two Years for Someone Else’s Crimes?'

The Daily

The New York Times

News, Daily News

4.5 • 97.8K Ratings

🗓️ 7 August 2022

⏱️ 48 minutes

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Summary

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.

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0:00.0	Even in this day and age, it's frighteningly easy for someone to slip away from society
0:09.6	who gravely needs help.
0:11.9	And our bureaucracies that have been created to grant help are still woefully inadequate.
0:17.9	This is the story of a homeless man named Joshua.
0:21.4	I wrote about him recently for the New York Times magazine.
0:25.9	Joshua lived on the streets of Honolulu, leading a pretty peaceful life.
0:30.4	He was nonviolent and he didn't abuse drugs or alcohol.
0:34.7	But he suffered from schizophrenia.
0:37.5	He managed to stay out of trouble for the most part, with the exception of the few times
0:42.3	when he was picked up by the police for things like sleeping on a park bench or in someone's
0:46.3	backyard.
0:47.3	But one day in 2017, while standing in line on the sidewalk for a soup kitchen, the police
0:53.9	nab Joshua, seemingly for no reason.
0:58.5	Joshua spends four months in jail.
1:01.0	He gets transferred to a state psychiatric hospital.
1:04.2	And it's only there that he understands that the police have been working off of a bench
1:07.9	warrant, and outstanding arrest for somebody who would stole in a truck, used cocaine,
1:13.8	and violated probation.
1:16.0	Joshua protests and says, I'm not that guy, I never did any of these things.
1:21.2	But no one believes him, and for close to two and a half years, Joshua languishes in
1:26.7	this psychiatric facility.
1:28.9	Even though he continues to insist, he is not the man they were looking for.
	...

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