Why did Chuck Berry get arrested?

Answer 1

Which time? There were a few times, for different reasons.

In 1944, before he could graduate high school, he was arrested and convicted of armed robbery after taking a joy ride with his friends to Kansas City, Missouri. In his 1987 autobiography, Chuck Berry: The Autobiography, he retells the story that his car broke down on the side of a highway and, not having a way home, flagged down a passing car. Berry attempted to commandeer the man's car at gunpoint with a non-functional pistol. The carjacked man called the police from a nearby pay phone; they quickly pulled over Berry in the car and arrested him and his friends. Berry was released from the Intermediate Reformatory for Young Men at Algoa, near Jefferson City, Missouri on his 21st birthday in 1947.

In December 1959, Berry was arrested under the Mann Act after an allegation that he had sex with a 14-year-old waitress whom he had transported over state lines to work as a hat check girl at his club. After an initial two-week trial in March 1960, Berry was convicted, fined $5,000, and sentenced to five years in prison. Berry's appeal that the judge's comments and attitude were racist and prejudiced the jury against him was upheld, and a second trial was heard in May and June 1961, which resulted in Berry being given a three-year prison sentence. After another appeal failed, Berry served one and one half years in prison from February 1962 to October 1963.

Berry pleaded guilty to tax evasion and was sentenced to four months in prison and 1,000 hours of community service-doing benefit concerts-in 1979.

And in 1990, Berry pleaded guilty to misdemeanor possession of marijuana. He was given a six-month suspended jail sentence, two years' unsupervised probation, and ordered to donate $5,000 to a local hospital.