91Ö±²¥

The state is preparing to pay $20.4 million this year to settle legal claims that include a $1.2 million reimbursement of federal funding spent on COVID-19 rental assistance for undeserving households.

Claim payments, which are expected to receive final approval at the Legislature by Friday, also involve two wrongful convictions, two prisoner deaths and two school sex assault cases.

The single biggest settlement outlay from 91Ö±²¥ taxpayers this year sought by the state Department of the Attorney General is $8 million to settle an administrative case in which the state Department of Education failed to provide two years of compensatory education that a state hearings officer ruled was owed to a severely disabled public school student in 2023.

The 2023 administrative ruling stemmed from allegations that DOE had been providing the student with inconsistent special education and related services since 2018. Parents of the student said the failures severely harmed their child, and the state could have faced a federal lawsuit over the matter.

All the claims slated for payment this year — 36 in all — are listed in House Bill 2250.

This year’s cost more than doubles the $9.5 million for 38 claims in 2025. In 2024, there were 41 claims costing $18.1 million that followed 35 claims costing $25.7 million in 2023.

Some lawmakers this year questioned the validity of a few claims, including the size of two wrongful conviction claim settlements and the settlement of a federal fine over a big cesspool on state land.

The Senate Judiciary Committee amended HB 2250 during a March 24 hearing on the bill to remove a $151,132 appropriation to settle a U.S. Environ­- mental Protection Agency fine against the state Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity for having a large-capacity cesspool on land the agency owns in Waimanalo in violation of a federal law that required such cesspools to be closed by 2005.

The existence of the cesspool, near a rodeo stadium on state land leased to a private entity, was not known to DAB officials, according to testimony on the bill from the Department of the Attorney General.

Sen. Karl Rhoads, chair of the Judiciary Committee, wanted state attorneys to justify why the cesspool is the state’s responsibility.

“It seems to us that the claim should be against the lessee who put in this gigantic cesspool, and I’m not sure why we’re on the hook for it,” he said during the hearing.

For a subsequent hearing on the bill, the department said in written testimony that the $151,132 claim represented a settlement of a fine levied against DAB for “an undisputable open cesspool violation.”

Rhoads (D, Nuuanu-­Downtown-Iwilei) also said during the March 24 hearing that it appeared to him that the state should be paying more for two wrongful conviction cases.

In one of those cases, state attorneys agreed to pay $600,000 over the 2011 exoneration of Alvin F. Jardine III, who was convicted in 1992 on charges that included sex assault, kidnapping and burglary.

Jardine, after two trials that ended in hung juries, was convicted in a third trial and sentenced to 35 years in prison after he was identified by the victim as the person who broke into her Maui home, held her at knifepoint and repeatedly raped her during a 1990 attack.

Jardine long maintained his innocence, and passed up possible early parole by refusing to enter a sex-abuse treatment program that would have required him to admit guilt.

With help of the 91Ö±²¥ Innocence Project, Jardine got his conviction vacated in 2011 based on more modern testing of DNA from the crime scene. Jardine, then 41, had spent about 20 years in prison. In 2016, he sought compensation in court under a 91Ö±²¥ law that allows payment of $50,000 for every year spent wrongfully incarcerated, which amounted to $1 million in his case.

Jardine died in December.

Kat Brady, coordinator of the Community Alliance on Prisons, said in written testimony on another bill related to incarceration, that Jardine was found dead on Maui at age 56 as a homeless man who struggled with poverty, substance abuse and psychological trauma without getting financial help that was owed to him by the state.

Rhoads noted that Jardine’s compensation case lasted nine years and was appealed to the 91Ö±²¥ Supreme Court before parties reached a $600,000 settlement.

“So, I’m gonna … suggest that we’re under an obligation to follow the statute, and that there should be an additional $400,000 awarded to Jardine’s heirs because he passed away before he was able to get the money,” Rhoads said, adding that the claim payment also should include interest.

Rhoads also recommended interest be added to a $420,833 payment for Roynes J. Dural II, who had his 2003 conviction on sexual assault charges vacated in 2018 based on newly discovered evidence. Dural had been paroled after spending eight years in prison.

The Department of the Attorney General responded in written testimony at a subsequent hearing on the bill that the claim payment amounts were voluntarily agreed to by the plaintiffs and shouldn’t be increased.

“These cases are subject to fully executed settlement agreements that were negotiated at arm’s length between the parties, with each plaintiff being adequately represented by counsel,” the department said.

Claim payment appropriations this year also include a third case of someone who was unjustly denied their freedom due to state actions.

Joshua Spriestersbach spent more than two years in the state psychiatric hospital stemming from another man’s probation violation tied to drug charges.

Police arrested Spriestersbach in 2017 on a bench warrant for Thomas R. Castleberry. According to the Department of the Attorney General, the arresting officer searched a state criminal justice system for the Social Security number Spriestersbach provided to confirm his identity, and the system showed a record for Spriestersbach with Thomas Castleberry listed as an alias.

According to a federal lawsuit Spriestersbach filed in 2021, he said he occasionally used his grandfather’s name, William C. Castleberry, and that no one compared his photograph or fingerprints with those of Thomas Castleberry.

Spriestersbach was deemed to be suffering from mental illness and not fit to be tried in the criminal case, so he was committed to the 91Ö±²¥ State Hospital. He was released in 2020 after authorities realized he wasn’t Thomas Castleberry.

Spriestersbach contended in his lawsuit that state public defenders who represented him breached a duty to verify his identity. The lawsuit against the Office of the Public Defender was settled for $200,000. In a separate settlement, the City and County of Honolulu agreed to pay $975,000.

Other claims on the state’s list to fund this year include:

• $1.2 million to reimburse the federal government for fraudulent activity committed by applicants in Emergency Rental Assistance programs created to provide financial aid to low-income renters facing financial hardship directly or indirectly due to the coronavirus pandemic. The sum was determined after review by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of the Inspector General and the state Department of Budget and Finance.

• $800,000 for settling a lawsuit over the death of Jimuel Gatioan, a pretrial detainee at Oahu Community Correctional Center who committed suicide there in 2023 without being on suicide watch despite warnings from the prosecutor and defense attorney in his case.

• $600,000 for settling a lawsuit over the death of Brian O’Gorman, a Halawa Correctional Facility inmate who died in 2022 as a result of cardiac arrhythmia after being treated for mental health issues rather than drug withdrawal that allegedly made him severely dehydrated and unable to walk or communicate.

• $500,000 to settle a lawsuit filed in 2022 by parents of a McKinley High School student who was sexually assaulted at school by a classmate who plaintiffs alleged was known to DOE as a danger and went unsupervised.

• $400,000 to settle a lawsuit filed in 2020 by a publicly unnamed plaintiff who reported to police in 1979 that she had been sexually assaulted by a Campbell High School assistant canoe paddling coach while she was a student.

The Department of the Attorney General told lawmakers that its longstanding policy is to advise agencies on how to avoid claims that the Legislature is asked to fund.

There were also 13 miscellaneous claims amounting to $743,575 for replacing outdated, lost or misplaced state checks issued to people and companies.