Break out the world’s tiniest violin, celebrity gossip readers.
Actually, no.
Don’t bother.
Josh Duggar doesn’t deserve anything even close to that.
On Monday morning, the father of seven lost his multi-pronged appeal in an Eighth Circuit Arkansas court.
Duggar, of course, was convicted on charges of child pornography in December 2021 and then sentenced to over 12 years in prison six months later.
His legal team, however, immediately said it would appeal the verdict for three distinct reasons.
In its aforementioned ruling, this court voted unanimously to DENY JOSH DUGGAR HIS APPEAL across the board.
FIRST, Duggar tried to argue that U.S. District Judge Timothy L. Brooks deprived him of his right to present a complete defense because Brooks banned jurors at Josh’s trial from hearing much of anything about a former colleague of Duggar’s who Josh’s lawyers tried to blame for the illicit downloads on Duggar’s computer.
On Monday, though?
U.S. Circuit Judge David Stras cited Federal Rule of Evidence 403 to find Judge Brooks had “unquestionably constitutional discretion to exclude” the former employee’s past conviction from the record, adding:
“The right to present a complete defense right does not trump a district court’s discretion to keep out confusing or misleading evidence, even if it would be helpful to the defense.”
In a SECOND appeals argument, Duggar claimed the court should have excluded statements he made to investigators outside the presence of a defense attorney.
If you’ll recall, Duggar asked federal agents when they raided his place of work in 2019 if the investigation had anything to do with “someone downloading child pornography.”
At that point, no one had mentioned such a term or offense to Duggar before he volunteered the information.
The Arkansas panel found on Monday that Duggar voluntarily made the statements while he was not under arrest or interrogation… therefore, they were permissible to use at the trial.
THIRD and finally, Duggar’s team tried to attack the credibility of a key government witness who testified about Josh’s cell phone use on the used car lot where he downloaded dozens of images and videos of children under the age of 12.
Duggar had also alleged pertinent statements by his own expert forensic analyst were unjustly suppressed at the trial.
However, this panel reviewed the claims for an abuse of discretion but found none.
So there you have it.
Duggar is currently incarcerated at FCI Seagoville, a low-security facility in Texas, reportedly struggling mightily in the heat.
His scheduled release date is October 2, 2032, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
The disgraced reality star’s attorneys will probably file more documents and do whatever they can to get him our earlier — but, at this point, that seems like an extremely unlikely outcome.
