To no one’s surprise, Josh Duggar continues to fight his conviction and sentence.
Earlier this year, the court denied his motion for a new, free attorney to continue his endless appeals.
Josh is representing himself. And he’s even landed himself a hearing.
At the upcoming court date, he will continue to insist that his trial was unfair, and that his constitutional rights were violated.
Yes, Josh Duggar continues to fight his conviction & sentence
On Friday, November 21, US District Judge Timothy L Brooks set a hearing for March 4, 2026 in Fayetteville.
This is the date, the North Arkansas Democrat Gazette reports, on which Josh Duggar and prosecutors will present arguments.
Josh continues to insist that his trial was unfair. He claims that the court violated his constitutional rights.
As you may recall, the court denied his efforts to get a new, free attorney to assist in his unending appeals. The right to an attorney has limits, and usually ends after the first appeal or so outside of capital convictions.
Thus far, local judges, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court have all declined Josh’s efforts to go free. But he won’t accept that he’s in prison where he belongs.
He has a whole list of gripes
This time around, Josh is claiming that he has eight grounds for post-conviction relief.
According to the disgraced former reality star, even if the individual claims are not enough, the cumulative effect of these alleged errors should be enough.
Naturally, Josh has a whole laundry list of gripes. He claims that the trial improperly excluded evidence of someone else allegedly having access to his computer.
He also claims that the United States government’s lead forensic expert lied under oath, about the child sex-abuse images that he accessed and about his downloading activity.
Josh also whines that uncharged criminal conduct was prejudicial. (Courts will sometimes allow testimony that establishes a pattern of behavior — like, hypothetically, if someone who downloaded media of the sexual abuse of young girls had also molested five young girls, four of whom being his own sisters)
To hear him tell it, a lot of people conspired to wrongfully convict him
According to Josh Duggar, a witness “lied” about a confession that he had given. It seems that he’s really annoyed that his adolescent crimes came up at all.
Longtime Duggar-watchers may recall that Josh’s team had dreamed up a scapegoat, a part-time employee at the car dealership. He clearly resents that he was not allowed to claim to the jury that this guy had set up a partition on Josh’s computer and then used file-sharing to gradually download CSAM.
Josh, who was arrested by the federal government when fellow conservative Donald Trump was president, claimed that the prosecution was politically motivated.
Oh, and he complains that his family’s statement to Facebook from 2015 — one acknowledging his unfaithfulness to wife Anna — should never have come up at trial. He insists that producers “coerced” the statement, and that he never wrote it.
Josh also alleges that he had ineffective assistance of counsel. That is something that does happen at times — someone gets a bad attorney. Did it happen this time, with Jim Bob presumably footing the bill?
In case you need a refresher …
In May of 2019, Josh used a work computer at his used car lot to downloaded photos and video of the sexual abuse of girls, at least some of whom were below the age of 12.
As we have previously explained, the Department of Homeland Security detected these downloads using a program called Torrential Rain, which detects peer-to-peer internet usage to catch those trading in CSAM.
Every download and viewing of this heinous material effectively re-victimizes the children, living or dead, who first suffered to gratify and enrich adult predators.
Josh had created a partition on his computer to isolate the device’s activities from the Covenant Eyes program that his wife Anna Duggar used to monitor Josh’s internet activity. It is the same creepy program used by Mike Johnson.
The silver lining is that it seems that Josh spent so much time and energy hiding his crimes from his wife that he forgot that they are, after all, crimes. Thus, investigators caught him.
Hopefully, Josh will remain behind bars for the next seven years
In December of 2021, Josh Duggar received his conviction for receiving and possessing CSAM.
He received a sentence of 12-and-a-half years, which he is currently serving.
Thus far, Josh’s endless appeals have not been successful.
But he’s going to keep throwing things at the wall until something sticks. Or until his release date in December 2032. Whichever comes first.
While it is of course better for a dozen bad dudes to go free rather than one innocent person sit in prison, it would be better and safer for the world if Josh remained behind bars.