Rather than pull over for the police, James Brown kept driving. A high-speed chase ensued, with Brown leading his pursuers out of Georgia and into South Carolina. At one point, Brown tried to slam his truck into two police cars (per Time Magazine). This prompted police to begin firing their weapons at Brown’s vehicle. They managed to hit Brown’s tires, but Brown kept moving.
Miles down the road, Brown finally lost control of his truck and crashed it into a ditch (via History). He was arrested and sent to prison on charges of aggravated assault and failure to obey an officer. Those charges earned him a sentence of six years and six months at the State Park Correctional Institute in South Carolina.
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Brown’s wife at the time maintained that her husband’s mental state was in disarray from the medication he was taking following jaw surgery. Brown himself offered an additional twist on the story, though. According to Brown, he was trying to surrender to a black police officer at the side of a roadway when several white officers approached and began breaking out the windows of his truck. Brown claimed that as he sped away, these same officers began to fire their weapons at him.
Brown served about half of his sentence and was freed in 1991, per Time Magazine. He picked up his career where he left off and began to tour once more. But his legal problems were not entirely behind him.
