(CNN) A Michigan man was recently exonerated of murder, a charge for which he spent nearly five years in prison. Now, he's suing a rental car company for not providing records that, his lawyers say, would've exonerated him earlier.
Herbert Alford was wrongfully convicted of second-degree murder in 2016 and freed in 2020 after the Hertz Corporation provided a receipt that showed Alford was renting a car from the 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 over 1,700 days incarcerated," Alford's attorneys wrote in a complaint obtained by CNN.
In 2011, Alford was mistakenly identified as the gunman who killed 23-year-old Michael Adams in a Lansing strip mall, according to the National Registry of Exonerations
Zuzara_The_DnD_Queen on March 14th, 2021 at 07:15 UTC »
25 thousand dollars is NOT ENOUGH
2.5 million is not enough but a much better offer
DesiArcy on March 14th, 2021 at 06:25 UTC »
At a minimum, it's highly suspicious that the company claimed they didn't have the records, yet was in fact able to produce them almost immediately when the judge stated that they would have to have a senior executive testify under oath that they didn't have such a record.
ClutchingMyTinkle on March 14th, 2021 at 05:08 UTC »
Welp, now I know which car rental company I will never use.
Edit: Behavior like this genuinely deserves a boycott.