A federal judge agreed to delay '19 Kids And Counting' star Josh Duggar's child pornography trial

Advertisement
A federal judge agreed to delay '19 Kids And Counting' star Josh Duggar's child pornography trial
Josh Duggar, then Executive Director of the Family Research Council Action, speaks at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa August 9, 2014. Brian Frank/Reuters
  • A federal judge in Arkansas ordered Tuesday that Josh Duggar's trial be delayed until November.
  • Duggar, the 33-year-old former reality-TV star, faces two child pornography charges.
  • The delay will allow Duggar's attorneys to have a computer forensics expert go through his devices.
Advertisement

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered Josh Duggar's child pornography trial postponed until late November, agreeing that the reality-TV star's attorneys needed several extra months to prepare.

Duggar, of the now-cancelled "19 Kids and Counting" show on TLC, was arrested in April and charged with receiving and possessing child pornography. Duggar pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The trial had been set to begin July 6 in Arkansas. Duggar's defense team initially requested that the judge delay the trial to February 2022, mostly to allow more time to hire an independent computer forensic expert to examine several of Duggar's devices.

Prosecutors argued that pushing the trial to next year would be an "unnecessary delay," but agreed that an extra few months for an expert review of Duggar's devices was both fair and customary for computer-based child exploitation trials.

Duggar was released from jail in May, and ever since has been living in the spare room of a couple who met Duggar's parents through church. A judge mandated that Duggar wear a GPS monitor at all times, and forbade him from contact with minors apart from his own six children.

Advertisement

At a detention hearing in May, a federal agent testified that Duggar downloaded and possessed 65 images of child pornography, as well as a two-minute video featuring young girls between the ages of 5 and 10. The agent told the court that one of the downloads was one of the worst pieces of child pornography he had witnessed in over 1,000 cases.

Duggar was also previously embroiled in a 2015 scandal, in which he was accused of molesting four of his sisters and a babysitter. Though Duggar's father reported the allegations to the police, no charges were brought against Duggar.

{{}}