Story at a glance
- Alford was convicted of murder in 2016.
- The conviction was thrown out and charges were dropped last year after a rental car receipt showed he rented a vehicle minutes before the crime.
- Alford’s attorneys had requested the records from the company during his trial in 2015, but the rental agency said it was unable to provide a receipt at that time. The record was finally provided in 2018.
A Michigan man who was wrongfully convicted of murder is suing rental car company Hertz for its alleged failure to produce a receipt that would’ve proven his innocence prior to his conviction, WLNS-TV reports.
The lawsuit seeking financial compensation from the rental agency was filed Tuesday, although the case is expected to move slowly due to Hertz’s bankruptcy reorganization, according to The Associated Press.
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Herbert Alford spent nearly five years behind bars for the 2011 shooting death of Michael Adams. His conviction came in 2016 and he was handed a 30 to 60 year sentence.
Alford’s conviction was thrown out and charges were dropped in 2020 after the critical evidence from Hertz was obtained in 2018 following multiple court orders and subpoenas. Alford’s attorneys had requested the records from the company during his trial in 2015, but the rental agency said it was unable to provide a receipt at that time.
The receipt showed Alford used a credit card to rent a car at a Lansing-area airport six minutes before Adams was shot and killed. Adams was killed in a neighborhood approximately 20 minutes away.
“There is no question that he would have avoided going to prison had they produced this documentation,” Jamie White, Alford’s attorney, told WLNS-TV.
“If anybody has ever traveled Lansing from Pleasant Grove to the airport you know that is not possible to accomplish. You couldn’t even do it in a helicopter,” White said.
A Hertz spokesperson said they were saddened to learn of Alford’s experience.
“While we were unable to find the historic rental record from 2011 when it was requested in 2015, we continued our good faith efforts to locate it. With advances in data search in the year following, we were able to locate the rental record in 2018 and promptly provided it,” Hertz told Changing America in an email.
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