What was chuck berry indicted for

Hannah, accusing him of filing malicious and politically motivated charges, and later cut a no-jail plea deal in which the child-abuse charges were dismissed and he dropped his civil case. But by , he was in trouble again, busted over a racially charged incident at a dance at the Meridian, Miss. The victim in question was a year-old waitress and prostitute whom Berry picked up while traveling in Mexico and brought back to St. Louis to work as a hostess at his Club Bandstand nightclub. Berry — who later claimed the girl told him she was 21 — fired her after several weeks, after which she was busted for prostitution and told the cops that Berry repeatedly had sex with her while they were on the road, including in the back of his Cadillac.

The conviction was overturned based on racist remarks made by the judge, but a second jury also convicted Berry and he wound up serving 20 months behind bars, during which time he wrote several songs. The court session came little more than a month after Berry had entertained then-President Jimmy Carter and his family on the lawn of the White House.

Celebrity coverage of all kinds tends to flatten people into extremes: someone is a hero, or they are a monster, which is frankly childish. Berry might have been incapable of moderating his own extremes, but the rest of us should be better at conveying the shades of grey. This article is more than 4 years old. Hadley Freeman. Chuck Berry in Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault.

US Government. World War II. Cold War. Art, Literature, and Film History. However, she was fired from the club after only a few weeks. Berry said that he fired her because she came on to him at work.

Not long after she was fired, Escalanti was arrested on charges of prostitution, she told the police about her working situation with Berry, and this lead to his arrest.

At the conclusion of a two-week trial, Berry was sentenced to five years in prison. He appealed, arguing that the judge was racist and biased against him; the jury in the case also consisted entirely of white men.

He appealed a third time, and in the end, Berry spent a year and a half in prison.