Josh Duggar’s child pornography trial in federal court in Arkansas has been completed, and jury deliberations began on Wednesday.
The 33-year-old former “19 Kids and Counting” actress is accused of downloading child pornography from the internet in May 2019, some of which portray sexual abuse of children under the age of 12.
He pled not guilty to counts of downloading and possessing child pornography, which carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in jail if convicted.
The trial began last week, and according to the Associated Press, the prosecution rested its case on Monday. The defense rested Tuesday after Duggar’s lawyers began calling witnesses.
According to Insider and People, the jury will have to evaluate the following significant pieces of evidence and testimony as it deliberates Duggar’s fate.
1. Duggar’s supposed technological prowess
Throughout the trial, other witnesses testified regarding Duggar’s technological abilities, which his defense have downplayed. According to KNWA, Clint Branham, a Walmart cybersecurity expert who has “run in the same circles” as Duggar for the past two decades, described the former reality star as “a power user of computer systems” who was “comfortable modifying hardware.”
Duggar discussed setting up Linux partitions — which split and isolate a sector of a disk or hard drive — with Jim Holt, the husband of Duggar family member Bobye Holt, in 2010.
Investigators discovered a Linux partition on Duggar’s desktop computer, which contained child pornography. Prosecutors claim Duggar installed it so he could download child pornography without being caught by the “accountability software” that tracked his online behavior and reported it to his wife.
2. Duggar’s phone activities while child pornography was downloaded
According to BuzzFeed News, James Fottrell, director of the Justice Department’s High Technology Investigative Unit, testified about activity on an HP desktop computer, a MacBook Pro laptop, and an iPhone recovered from Duggar’s car dealership between May 11 and May 16, 2019.
Duggar’s smartphone sent a text message on May 15 suggesting he would be at the vehicle dealership until 6 p.m., according to Fottrell. Duggar’s desktop computer downloaded a file named “Marissa.zip” shortly after the communication was sent, according to Fottrell, which contained 65 child pornography photographs.
Duggar’s lawyers claimed that Duggar’s employees had access to the HP desktop computer and the car dealership’s WiFi and that the data might have been downloaded by someone else.
3. Duggar’s knowledge of the dark web and peer-to-peer file-sharing networks
