Michael Pardue
Mobile
County, Alabama
Date of Crime: May 22, 1973
After days of police interrogation at the Saraland Police
Department, Michael Pardue, 17, confessed to brutally murdering Ronald
Rider, 20, and Harvey Hodges, 68, attendants at two gas stations 16 miles
apart in Mobile and Baldwin counties. He also confessed to the murder
of a skeleton, which happened to be found in a Mobile County ditch during
the interrogation. The skeleton was later identified as Theodore
White, 43, and his cause of death is officially listed as unknown. Using similar tactics the police coerced Pardue's associates John Brown, 21,
and Theresa Lanier, 15, to sign confessions, although Brown could not read
and the three confessions contradicted each other as well as the forensic
and physical facts of the cases.
Pardue's Baldwin County trial lasted 1 1/2 hours. At it, Pardue was
convicted of the Rider murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. He
then pleaded guilty to the other two murders because both his attorney and
the DA informed him he would receive the death penalty for these crimes if
he did not. Pardue did not know that Alabama had no death penalty in
1973. For his cooperation, Pardue received three consecutive life
sentences, the maximum allowable under Alabama law.
Three officials associated with Pardue's prosecution such as Baldwin County
DA Jimmy Hendrix were later imprisoned for drug smuggling or jury tampering,
bribery, and extortion. Pardue escaped from prison three times in
1977, 1978, and 1987, but was caught each time within a matter of days. For his last escape he received two additional life sentences, which also
made him a habitual offender under Alabama law.
In 1992, a federal judge issued a writ of habeas corpus on the Rider murder
conviction, allowing Pardue to appeal it in state courts. In 1994, the
Alabama Supreme Court overturned the conviction on the grounds that police
did not read him his rights until they were 30 hours into a 78-hour
interrogation. Months after this 1994 decision another federal judge
issued a writ of habeas corpus on the Hodges and White murder convictions
because officers failed to tell the then teenage Pardue that he could apply
for youthful offender status. These two convictions were effectively
overturned.
In 1995, a Mobile County jury convicted Pardue of the Hodges' murder after
hearing the 22-year-old tapes of his confession at the Saraland Police
Department. Pardue was then sentenced to 100 years in prison. A
year later an appeals court overturned the conviction after concluding that
investigators coerced his confession and denied him access to a lawyer.
In 1997, prosecutors in both Mobile and Baldwin Counties abandoned their
murder cases against him. Pardue remained imprisoned solely for
escaping from his wrongful imprisonment. In 2000, the Alabama Supreme
Court threw out convictions stemming from Pardue's escapes. A year
later Pardue pleaded guilty to escape related charges in exchange for a time
served sentence plus parole. He was released after serving 28 years in
prison. Pardue's story was featured on Dateline and he and
wife Becky have written a book entitled
Freeing the
Innocent. [7/07]
________________________________
References:
American Justice,
Justice: Denied
Posted in:
Victims of the State,
Alabama Cases, Favorite Case Stories, Triple Homicide Cases
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