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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"And he was a convicted nonce.
A fact which people seem to be forgetting.
Not true. A pervert maybe, but not a nonce
RIP Chuck
He was convicted of having sexual intercourse with a 14 year old
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On December 23, 1959, Chuck Berry is arrested in St. Louis, Missouri, on charges relating to his transportation of a 14-year-old girl across state lines for allegedly “immoral purposes.”
The Mann Act is the common name for a piece of federal legislation originally known as the United States White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910. Though intended as a tool for cracking down on organized prostitution, the vague language of the Mann Act regarding the transportation of women for “immoral purposes” rendered its provisions broadly unenforceable. It has been selectively applied in various high-profile cases over time, however—most famously in Berry’s and in that of the heavyweight boxing great Jack Johnson.
In Berry’s case, the Mann Act charges stemmed from what Berry contended was his offer of legitimate employment in his St. Louis nightclub to a girl he had met in a bar in Juarez, Mexico. Three weeks after being fired from Berry’s nightclub, 14-year-old Janice Norine Escalanti took a different story to the St. Louis police, and Berry was arrested two days later, on this day in 1959.
Berry’s defense was not found credible by the all-male, all-white jury at his first trial, and he was convicted on March 11, 1960, and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and a $5,000 fine. Although he would have his conviction vacated and a new trial ordered by a Federal Appeals Court in October 1960 due to disparaging racial comments made by the judge in his original trial, Berry would be convicted again on retrial in March 1961 and serve the better part of the next two years in prison.
In some States of the USA at the time sex with 14 year olds was legal. Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis were his contemporarys and did the same thing. Im not saying its right in todays context, but it happened then.
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