After a tumultuous few years of increasingly bizarre, sometimes violent public outbursts, the self-styled Soul Brother No. 1 became Inmate No. 155413 at South Carolina’s State Park Correctional Center.
On this day, Dec. 15, in 1988, James Brown began serving a six-year sentence for carrying a deadly weapon at a public gathering, attempting to flee police, and driving under the influence of drugs, as reported in his 2006 New York Times obituary. Rumors of a PCP habit had already surfaced by the time his erratic behavior came to a head in September, when he reportedly stormed into the insurance company next to his office, waving a shotgun and complaining that “strangers were using his bathroom,” as TIME reported in its take on his crime and punishment.