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MOBILE, Alabama – Michael Pardue, whose 3 murder convictions from the 1970s were later dismissed amid headlines and controversy, was arrested late Saturday night after barricading himself in a house during a domestic disturbance, Mobile police said.

Pardue, 55, was in Mobile County Metro Jail Sunday on bail totaling $3,000, records show. He was charged with 3 counts of third-degree domestic violence in relation to harassment, menacing and reckless endangerment.

All 3 counts are misdemeanors.

Police spokeswoman Ashley Rains said officers were summoned to a house in the 4500 block of Park Road about 8:30 p.m. Saturday on what was originally a “nature unknown” call.

A woman at the scene said that Pardue had threatened her with a gun and fired a shot inside the house before she was able to leave and go to a neighbor’s home, according to Rains.

Officers spotted Pardue on an elevated porch of the home and told him to come down, but he refused. Rains said.

Pardue barricaded himself inside the home before being arrested, Rains said. He was booked into jail shortly before 1 a.m., records show.

Pardue’s history of violence goes back almost 40 years

Pardue’s legal troubles date back to the early 1970s and led to his eventually serving 28 years in prison.

In 1973, at age 17, a Baldwin County jury convicted him of killing Ronald Rider, a 20-year-old clerk at a Battleship Parkway service station.

Not long after, he pleaded guilty to killing a Saraland store clerk, Will Harvey Hodges, 68; and a Prichard man, Theodore Roosevelt White, 43, according to Press-Register archives.

Hodges died the same day as Rider, according to the archives.

Pardue’s conviction in Rider’s death was overturned in 1994 by the Alabama Supreme Court because, the court ruled, Baldwin investigators delayed reading Pardue’s rights to him until they were 30 hours into a 78-hour interrogation.

Later that year, a federal judge ruled the Mobile County authorities had failed to tell Pardue that he could apply for youthful offender status.

In 1995, a Mobile County jury convicted Pardue of Hodges’ death, and he was sentenced to 100 years in prison. But the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals overturned that conviction on grounds that the confession was coerced and Pardue was denied access to a lawyer.

Efforts to prosecute Pardue for the 3 killings were dropped in 1997, but he remained in prison for four more years on escape charges. A plea deal got him released in 2001.

Pardue filed suit in 1999 against a number of people involved in the murder investigations, but most of the cases were dismissed over time, and Pardue voluntarily dropped claims against two defendants in 2010.

U.S. District Judge Ginny Granade ruled in favor of the last 4 defendants named in Pardue’s lawsuit in January.

Online court and jail records indicate Pardue had not been arrested for any offense between the time of his release from prison and Saturday night.

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