On October 27, 1961, a U.S. for transporting a minor across state lines for immoral purposes in violation of the Mann Act. After an earlier conviction in the case had been thrown out a year earlier, Berry was retried—and this time, the charges stuck. He was sentenced to three years in prison.
Chuck Berry was one of the biggest pop stars of the late 1950s when he began to have legal problems. While charges in yet another Mann Act violation were pending (which were dismissed in 1960), Berry met Janice Escalante, a 14-year-old Native American girl with roots in the Apache tribe, in a bar near El Paso, Texas. According to Berry, who took her on the road with his traveling rock show, Escalante claimed to be 21 years old. After the two fell out, Escalante complained about Berry to the authorities.
Berry served his sentence for a short stretch in Leavenworth Federal Prison before being transferred to a Missouri jail, where he spent his time studying accounting and writing songs. Among the songs he wrote before his release from prison in October 1963 were “No Particular Place to Go” and “You Never Can Tell,” later memorialized in the film Pulp Fiction.
