A federal judge has denied motions to suppress video evidence found on electronic devices that were seized from former reality TV star Josh Duggar, who is facing child pornography charges.
U.S. District Judge Timothy L. Brooks also said Monday that a hearing on the motions isn’t warranted, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Duggar, who appeared in TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting,” was charged in April with two counts of downloading and possessing child pornography.
Duggar’s attorneys argued that evidence in the case had become “stale” because so much time elapsed between federal agents downloading files from the seized devices and the issuance of a search warrant.
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Brooks said courts have found on numerous occasions that evidence in child pornography cases doesn’t become stale, even when files were downloaded many months before search warrants were issued.
In a May hearing, Department of Homeland Security Special Agent Gerald Faulkner emphasized how disturbing the images found on Duggar's computer were.
Faulkner, who has worked more than 1,000 child exploitation cases in the last 11 years, testified that the files were the “top five worst I’ve ever had to examine” and included child sex abuse images and videos of minors as young as 18 months.
If convicted, he faces up to 20 years of imprisonment and fines up to $250,000 on each count.