A Michigan man who was wrongly convicted of murder filed a lawsuit against the Hertz vehicle rental company after it allegedly misplaced a receipt that was exculpatory.
Herbert Alford, 47, was convicted of second-degree murder in 2016 for the 2011 fatal shooting of Michael Adams, 23. Hertz located the receipt that proved his alibi in 2018. In the trial that led to his initial conviction, prosecutors claimed that Alford shot Adams in the back over drugs, but the receipt showed that he had been renting a car at a Lansing airport about 20 minutes away from where Adams was killed.
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He filed a lawsuit against the rental car company on Tuesday in Ingham County, alleging its “actions, inactions and negligence” led to his wrongful conviction. Alford is seeking unspecified monetary damages, but that could be hampered by the company’s bankruptcy.
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“There is no question that (Alford) would have avoided going to prison had they produced this documentation,” James White, Alford’s lawyer, told WLNS-TV.
Hertz was “deeply saddened” by the wrongful conviction, a company spokesperson said.
“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,” Hertz spokeswoman Lauren Luster said Wednesday. “With advances in data search in the years following, we were able to locate the rental record in 2018 and promptly provided it.”
The receipt shows Alford at Hertz renting a car at 3 p.m. on Oct. 18, 2011, but five minutes earlier, a Lansing police officer was dispatched to the location of where Adams was shot, according to the Lansing State Journal.
Alford was convicted of second-degree murder and two weapons charges and sentenced to 30 years to life in prison in December 2016. A judge granted a motion for a new trial in August 2018 based on the evidence Hertz had discovered. The judge vacated Alford’s conviction and ordered a new trial, writing in an order that he “was deprived of presenting an alibi defense.”
Alford was released on bond in February 2020, and in December of that year, prosecutors dismissed the charges.
The Ingham prosecutor, Carol Siemon, said the evidence from Hertz, which was not available at the time of the first trial, was a factor in the office’s decision to drop the charges against him and not retry him in December 2020.
“We do not believe that we can prove Mr. Alford’s legal culpability by the ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ standard,” Siemon said in a statement at the time. “Therefore, the Ingham County Prosecutor’s Office is dismissing the case against Herbert Alford.”
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White had unsuccessfully tried to obtain Hertz’s records on multiple occasions. The company released the records in 2018 after Alford’s appellate attorney, Daniel Bremer, subpoenaed it again.
“Almost five years of my life is gone from either sitting in jail waiting for trial or sitting in prison after the first trial,” Alford said in his statement.
