LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — An legal professional for Josh Duggar requested a federal appeals courtroom panel on Thursday to reverse the previous actuality TV star’s conviction for downloading baby pornography, saying investigators violated his rights by seizing the cellphone he was utilizing to attempt to name his lawyer in the course of the search that discovered the photographs.
Attorneys for Duggar and the U.S. Justice Division appeared earlier than a three-judge panel of the eighth U.S. Circuit Court docket of Appeals for a listening to. The panel didn’t point out after they deliberate to rule.
Duggar, 34, was arrested in April 2021 after a Little Rock police detective discovered baby porn recordsdata had been being shared by a pc traced to Duggar. Investigators testified that pictures depicting the sexual abuse of youngsters, together with toddlers, had been downloaded in 2019 onto a pc at a automotive dealership Duggar owned. He was convicted in 2021 and is serving a 12 1/2-year jail sentence.
Justin Gelfand, Duggar’s legal professional, mentioned federal brokers violated Duggar’s rights after they executed a search warrant of the automotive dealership in 2019, in search of his computer systems and cellphone. Duggar’s attorneys have argued statements he made to brokers in the course of the search ought to have been suppressed. Prosecutors mentioned Duggar requested the brokers if somebody had been downloading baby pornography and that he declined to say whether or not he had checked out baby pornography on-line, feedback that had been later used as proof within the trial.
“What federal brokers did is that they bodily took the cellphone out of his hand and from that time ahead, disadvantaged him of the flexibility to speak along with his authorized counsel, as was his constitutional proper,’ Gelfand mentioned.
However Joshua Handell, an legal professional with the Justice Division, mentioned Duggar was informed repeatedly he was free to go away the scene and was informed he didn’t have to speak to the brokers with out an legal professional current. In the course of the search, Duggar was with two companions and there was at the very least one different mobile phone that wasn’t seized.
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“All of that exhibits he had an possibility to talk to a lawyer although clearly the officers had appropriately seized the cellphone on the outset of their search,” Handell mentioned.
Gelfand additionally argued Duggar ought to have been capable of current an alternate suspect in the course of the trial: a former worker of the dealership who was a convicted intercourse offender and had used the identical laptop.
Handell mentioned the previous worker wasn’t even in the identical state on the dates the photographs had been downloaded.
A monitoring program that despatched experiences to Duggar’s spouse about his exercise had been put in on the pc, however the pictures and movies had been downloaded after software program had been put in that allowed him to obtain them with out being monitored, prosecutors mentioned.
TLC canceled “19 Youngsters and Counting” in 2015 following allegations that Duggar had molested 4 of his sisters and a babysitter years earlier. Authorities started investigating the abuse in 2006 after receiving a tip from a household buddy however concluded that the statute of limitations on any potential costs had expired.
Duggar’s mother and father mentioned after the allegations resurfaced in 2015 that he had confessed to the fondling and apologized privately. Duggar then apologized publicly for unspecified conduct and resigned as a lobbyist for the Household Analysis Council, a conservative Christian group. Months later, he additionally publicly apologized for dishonest on his spouse and a pornography dependancy, for which he then sought remedy.