Who is Herbert Alford? Hertz sued for not producing receipt clearing Michigan man of murder for THREE years
In December 2016, Herbert Alford was convicted of second-degree murder, using a firearm in the commission of a felony, and being a felon in possession of a firearm, in relation to the death of 23-year-old Michael Adams in 2011. Alford was arrested in 2015 but his lawyers argued they had a key piece of evidence that would clear his name.
While the murder was taking place on the 3400 block of Pleasant Grove in Lansing, Michigan, Alford was eight miles away at the Lansing Airport, completing a car rental transaction at Hertz. His lawyers would need just the receipt to clear Alford's name, yet despite numerous court orders and subpoenas throughout the trial and even after Alford was convicted, Hertz never provided the defense team with the time-stamped receipt.
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Alford, who was sentenced to 32 years and five months to 62 years and five months in prison would spend five years in prison before Hertz finally provided the crucial piece of evidence that would prove his innocence in 2018. The receipt showed that Alford's transaction was completed at 3 pm local time, which was just six minutes after the fatal shooting of Adams. With the receipt in hand, Alford's conviction was overturned and he was exonerated in Ingham County in 2020.
Now, Alford is suing Hertz for failing to produce evidence in a timely manner and is seeking compensation. His lawyer, Jamie White, told NPR, "They viciously disregarded his request for cooperation. For that reason, Hertz is responsible financially for the harms he has suffered. 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."
Alford's lawyers first got in touch with Hertz Corporation prior to January 2016, when White had reported at a pretrial hearing that he had subpoenaed Hertz in June 2015 for records, but that the company never responded, according to The National Registry of Exonerations. During a hearing in April 2016, while Hertz had been ordered to appear in March, company officials failed to appear. The presiding judge said he would not hold Hertz in contempt of the court, but would order the company to produce the reports. By November 2016, White reported that Hertz had still not complied.
After Alford was convicted in December 2016, attorney Danuel Bremer filed an appeal on Alford's behalf and asked that the Michigan Appellate Court remand the case back to the trial court for a hearing so that Hertz could be forced to disclose the records. When the motion was granted in February 2018, Bremer reached out to obtain the records from Hertz.
In the first response to Bremer, from a senior legal assistant at Hertz, a letter said that a search was conducted and no records were found. Bremer said that the assistant claimed that the records would have been purged since they were from 2011. Bremer then insisted that a representative of Hertz appear at a hearing on the motion for a new trial. A few days before the hearing in March 2018, Hertz finally provided Alford's defense team with the records.
With the receipt in hand, Bremer filed an amended motion for a new trial. In August 2018, Circuit Court Judge Clinton Canady III granted the motion for a new trial and vacated Alford's convictions. In February 2020, Alford was released on bond pending a retrial and in December 2020, the prosecution dismissed the charges.
A spokesperson for Hertz told NPR in an emailed statement that it was "deeply saddened" over Alford's experience and stated, "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."