Herbert Alford was convicted of a 2011 murder that he didn’t commit.
He spent half a decade in custody for it.
But the second-degree murder conviction in 2016 wouldn’t have happened if a car rental company had produced a receipt sooner, Alford alleges in a new lawsuit.
Hertz produced the receipt in 2018, and because of it, Alford was officially exonerated last year, the Associated Press reported Wednesday (March 10). It proved that Alford was renting a car in Lansing at the time of the fatal shooting.
He man aims for financial compensation in the suit filed Tuesday (March 9). Alford’s attorney, Jamie White, told WLNS-TV that there’s “no question” the receipt would have steered Alford clear of jail time.
“There is no question that he would have avoided going to prison had they produced this documentation,” White told WLNS.
Although Hertz didn’t respond for comment as of the WLNS story publication on Tuesday, a spokesperson responded to the Associated Press the following day:
“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. “With advances in data search in the years following, we were able to locate the rental record in 2018 and promptly provided it.”
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