In December 2021, Josh Duggar was finally convicted of possessing child pornography. It took forever for Duggar to even be charged with the crimes, and obviously, the charges did not cover Josh Duggar’s past as a serial child-predator. In May 2022, Josh was sentenced to 12 years and 7 months. As I said at the time, Josh is exactly the kind of predator who should be locked away for good, but twelve years is better than nothing. Well, I didn’t realize that Josh’s lawyers have been trying to appeal the conviction and the case has been slowly winding its way through the court system. They actually sent the case to the Supreme Court… and SCOTUS just rejected it, meaning the court will not even hear Josh’s appeal.

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Josh Duggar, a former reality television star convicted of downloading child sexual abuse images. Duggar was on the TLC show “19 Kids and Counting” with his large family before his 2021 conviction. The court did not elaborate on the denial, as is typical.

Federal authorities investigated after police in Little Rock, Arkansas, found child sexual abuse material was being shared by a computer traced to him. Investigators testified that images depicting the sexual abuse of children, including toddlers, were downloaded in 2019 onto a computer at a car dealership Duggar owned. He was sentenced to 12 and one-half years in prison.

Lower courts have upheld his conviction, rejecting Duggar’s argument that his attorneys should have been able to ask about the prior sex-offense conviction of a former employee of the dealership who had used the same computer. Duggar’s attorneys did not ask the former employee to testify after the judge ruled they could not mention the prior conviction.

TLC canceled “19 Kids and Counting” in 2015 following allegations that Duggar had molested four of his sisters and a babysitter years earlier. Authorities began investigating after receiving a tip from a family friend but concluded that the statute of limitations on any possible charges had expired.

Duggar’s parents said after the allegations resurfaced in 2015 that he had confessed to the fondling and apologized privately. Duggar then apologized publicly for unspecified behavior and resigned as a lobbyist for the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group.

[From The Associated Press]

The thing about another car dealership employee using the same computer is interesting because… it was Josh Duggar’s car dealership. He co-owned it. And it was his computer. Which is probably why the lower courts rejected the appeal and why it wasn’t introduced in the original trial. Before I came into this story, I did wonder what argument Josh could possibly make on appeal, and I’m not surprised that this was all he really had. I will give the authorities their props – they waited until they had a solid case against him and the conviction is really holding up.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Instagram.