A man who spent almost five years behind bars is suing a car rental company for failing to produce a receipt that would have exonerated him, after he was convicted of a 2011 murder.
Herbert Alford, who hails from Michigan, was convicted of second-degree murder in 2016 for the shooting death of Michael Adams.
Alford and his lawyer, Jamie White, were finally able to obtain the evidence from Hertz in 2018. This led to his release from Ingham County last year. He filed a lawsuit against the car rental company on Tuesday (March 9th) for financial compensation, though it is expected that the case will be slowed down as Hertz is currently going through bankruptcy reorganisation.
Per NPR, Hertz has said that it is "deeply saddened" by what transpired with Alford.
Spokeswoman Lauren Luster said on Wednesday (March 10th): "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 years following, we were able to locate the rental record in 2018 and promptly provided it."
This is a global organization with an enormous amount of resources," White countered to NPR. "The only thing that makes sense to me is that they looked at this African American man, presumed he'd be convicted, and they didn't have time for it."
The receipt showed that the individual had been renting a car at a Lansing-area airport around the time that Adams was shot - per White, who spoke to WLNS-TV.
Adams was killed 20-minutes away from where Alford was.
"There is no question that [Alford] would have avoided going to prison had they produced this documentation," White told the television station.
"They viciously disregarded his request for cooperation. For that reason Hertz is responsible financially for the harms he has suffered," White continued to NPR. "If a business entity wants to participate in our community then they have a minimal responsibility to participate in processes that protect those people.
"You can't take money from people and then ignore legitimate document requests that, in this case, could have saved someone's life."
Feature Image Credit: PA Pictures
