A man falsely convicted of murder sues a car rental company for failing to provide a receipt supporting his alibi

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Herbert Alford was falsely convicted of second-degree murder in 2016 and released in 2020 after the Hertz Corporation provided a receipt showing that Alford was renting a car from Lansing airport minutes before the murder took place. Hertz shared the documents with the court in 2018, more than two years after they were initially contacted by Alford’s lawyers.

“Had the defendants not ignored and disobeyed numerous court orders requiring them to produce the documentation that eventually freed Mr. Alford, he would not have spent more than 1,700 days in prison,” the lawyers wrote. Alford in a complaint obtained by CNN.

In 2011, Alford was falsely identified as the gunman who murdered 23-year-old Michael Adams in a Lansing strip mall, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.

He was arrested in 2015 after a suspect in a separate drug-related crime “struck a deal with the police” and provided information about Alford, according to the registry. He was convicted of manslaughter in 2016.

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Alford’s lawyers said they had requested information from Hertz that would confirm Alford’s alibi. Hertz did not respond, they said, until 2018 – more than a year after a jury convicted Alford for, among other things, murder.

The data provided by Hertz in 2018 showed that Alford had rented a car minutes before Adams’ murder, which took place about 20 minutes away, Alford’s attorney Jamie White told CNN.

Alford spent nearly five years in prison before all charges against him were dropped in February 2020. According to the complaint, he was under bail from February to December 2020.

But the years he spent in prison for a crime he didn’t commit could have been avoided, his attorneys said, had Hertz provided the receipt when it was first requested.

Hertz says it tried to find the coupon in 2016

A Hertz spokesman, who recently filed a reorganization plan in bankruptcy court, told CNN that the company is “deeply saddened by Mr. Alford’s experience.”
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“While we couldn’t find the historic 2011 rental record when it was filed in 2015, we have continued our good faith efforts to locate it,” the spokesperson said in a statement to CNN. “With advances in the data search in the years since, we were able to locate the rental record in 2018 and provide it immediately.”

Since his release in December, Alford has struggled to adjust to life after incarceration, White said.

“He’s going through some things right now,” he told CNN. “He’s trying to figure out his next move … and we hope he gets back on track soon.”

According to the complaint, Alford is seeking damages in excess of $ 25,000. But there is “no dollar figure that will make up for this,” White said.

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