Jury Asks to Hear Testimony Again
The jury in Josh Duggar's trial on child pornography charges is at present four-and-a-one-half hours into their deliberations on his guilt or innocence, afterwards listening to closing arguments Wednesday morning in federal court in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
No one, save for those 12 people — eight men and four women — may ever know what fully went on in the jury room. But the court got a peek into their thought procedure about halfway through the afternoon when some jurors sent word back to the estimate that they had a question.
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Afterwards both prosecutors and the defense squad had re-assembled, Judge Timothy Brooks read the brief note aloud:
The message, signed by two of the jurors, said they wanted to re-mind to the audio from the quondam 19 Kids and Counting star's interview with law enforcement on Nov. eight, 2019, as Homeland Security agents were searching his machine lot and seizing his electronic devices.
That 25-infinitesimal audio — which encompasses 3 excerpts from Duggar'south roughly 60 minutes-long interview — was heard concluding calendar week during the prosecution's case. It shows Duggar listing off which of his devices were at the car lot at the time of the search, including the HP desktop in the part that was later found to be used to access child pornography.
The interview recordings also testify Duggar, 33, detailing how he uses his devices, discussing how he fix up the work router and recently reconfigured it for security and maxim he is familiar with the kinds of file-sharing networks used in this case. Unprompted, he also references the popular Tor cyberspace browser, some other program used to access the sexual corruption fabric. Tor preserves a user'southward anonymity and, notoriously, provides access to the so-called "Dark Web."
Confusingly, notwithstanding, Duggar in the interview audio appears to mix upwardly Tor and torrent, which refers to file-sharing networks.
"I gauge I ameliorate not say if I don't understand … I don't come across any difference," he says after saying a friend recommended Tor.
| Credit: John Kushmaul
And also in the audio, Duggar learns the basis of the search warrant — that his business' IP accost was linked to the sharing of child pornography — and asks some questions about it, wondering if "there [is] something going on on my devices." He says he expects the investigators will exist able to "narrow information technology downwards" as to the source of the illicit content and says that he had not seen whatsoever crimson flags about this kind of beliefs from any of his employees or anyone at the car lot.
Audio shows the agents at one point instruct Duggar to listen rather than enquire more questions. By the end of the excerpts heard in court, he has grown more cautious. "I've watched my friends respond things and they go 'em," he says.
He says he is wary of incriminating himself in any style: "I'thou not saying that I'm guilty or non."
The deliberating jurors on Wednesday afternoon listened to all of that straight-through, with at to the lowest degree ane taking rapt notes.
Then they retired to their jury room. (Ane juror asked the judge if they should tell the two alternates what their purpose was in request to hear the audio once again — alluding to some kind of conversation or debate amidst themselves — but the approximate told the juror they were not to deliberate in open court.)
After the audio was played and equally the jury exited, one lingering juror asked the judge if she could be given a agenda showing dates from May 2019 to the present. (The sexual abuse material was accessed on Duggar'south work estimator over three days that May.) But both the defence and prosecutors objected as it was beyond the telescopic of the prove and testimony submitted at trial and the judge declined her request.
When the jurors were called dorsum to the courtroom at 5 p.thou., they told the gauge they wanted to break for the night. They begin once more Thursday morn.
| Credit: John Kushmaul
Closing Statement Highlights
Prosecutors and the defense used their endmost arguments on Midweek morning to reiterate and emphasize their main points:
The prosecution says Duggar was a sophisticated "ability user" linked by overwhelming circumstantial and time-and-place evidence to his piece of work calculator when a split, password-protected system fix up at that place was used to admission child pornography.
The defense says in that location are too many troubling questions, still, existence ignored by law enforcement — and these mysteries propose Duggar was hacked over a bizarre three-day period in May 2019 in what the key defence force expert likened to a "hit and run"-style intrusion.
The arguments were a thematic retread of the half dozen-day trial simply accessorized past occasionally animated gestures and visual aids.
"C'mon," Duggar attorney Justin Gelfand said afterwards describing his customer every bit so far from tech-savvy that someone had used his personal laptop to search how to turn off the green light on his MacBook.
In again list off the defence case supporting "remote access" of the work computer (such every bit the router's "universal plug and play" vulnerability and the use of streaming) Gelfand said it was not his chore to testify such hacking occurred — merely to bear witness how it had non been disproven by the prosecution.
He told the jurors: "Each of you has the power to say no if a single reasonable doubt remains in your mind."
| Credit: Anna Duggar/Instagram
Prosecutors, he said, had "painted themselves in a corner. They have committed to you to proving beyond a reasonable dubiousness that Josh Duggar had to physically exist behind the keyboard. ... If that's not true, the prosecution'southward entire case crumbles like a house of cards. And information technology's not true."
Gelfand also reflected on the future Duggar faced and how, Gelfand said, he hoped the jury saw things as he did.
"Everything is on the line," Gelfand said. "The stakes don't become whatsoever higher."
The government's attorneys twice got to speak, both before and then in rebuttal of the defence force.
Carly Marshall stressed all of the contextual bear witness connecting Duggar both to the piece of work machine's subconscious system (using his favored password) and to the days and times the child pornography was downloaded or viewed.
"Is this really a whodunit?" she asked. "His automobile lot. His office. His computer. His family on a desktop background. His password. Evidence in this case points to Josh Duggar."
Briefly noting how the trial had boiled downwards to densely technical testimony by dueling experts, Marshall acknowledged to jurors: "'Y'all heard a lot of data in this trial over the past week."
Nonetheless, she said: "Follow the trail. Where does it go?"
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Dustin Roberts so addressed the jury. Sounding beyond incredulous, he said Gelfand was "trying to divorce you lot [the jury] from your common sense."
Gelfand was "obscuring the truth in favor of a fantasy," Roberts said, "then blamed the government for not disproving the boogeyman."
Roberts went on: "This is not a complicated case: It's near a man who owns a car lot."
Source: https://people.com/tv/josh-duggar-jury-gives-peek-into-what-theyre-focused-on-as-deliberations-continue/
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