Problems with the law and the Internal Revenue Service have plagued him through the years. Shortly before a June 1979 performance for Jimmy Carter at the White House, the IRS charged Berry with income tax evasion, and he served a 100-day prison term that year. In 1988 in New York City, he paid a $250 fine to settle a $5 million lawsuit from a woman he allegedly punched in the mouth. In 1990 police raided his home at Berry Park, the Wentzville, Missouri, recording compound he opened in the late Fifties and had turned into an amusement complex by the Eighties. Finding 62 grams of marijuana and videotapes of women — one of whom was apparently a minor — using the restroom at a restaurant he owned, authorities filed felony drug and child-abuse charges against Berry. In order to have the child-abuse charges dropped, Berry agreed to plead guilty to one misdemeanor count of marijuana possession. He was given a six-month suspended jail sentence, placed on two years' unsupervised probation, and ordered to donate $5,000 to a local hospital.
Berry has continued to tour the world, sometimes with fellow classic rockers such as Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard, and moved to Ladue, Missouri, near St. Louis, where he performs regularly at the Blueberry Hill bar and restaurant.