With three or so months to go until former 19 Kids and Counting lead Josh Duggar goes to trial over child pornography charges, the disgraced reality star's legal team has been constantly busy trying to find ways to secure their client a future as a free man outside of prison. The lawyers recently filed paperwork to have the case dismissed altogether, and while it remains to be seen how successful they'll be with those attempts, they also filed a smaller-scale request regarding various pieces of evidence that the prosecution has submitted to the court. In this instance, it involves pictures of Duggar's hands and feet.
In the motion filed on August 20, Josh Duggar's lawyers requested for a federal judge to block the use of pictures showing their client's hands and feet from being used in the November trial, according to Insider. The pictures were apparently taken by officials during the process of Duggar being arrested back on April 29. The pictures, which don't automatically appear to share any impactful details, show the backs of Duggar's hands, as well as his feet; he was wearing black sneakers at the time.
In their paperwork, Josh Duggar's legal team claims the pictures were framed in an "atypical" fashion, and apparently weren't just quick snaps. The lawyers also claimed that authorities had ordered Duggar to position his hands and feet in specific ways for the pictures, calling the moves "particularly egregious," and stated that he wasn't with legal representation at the time the images were taken.
To that end, Josh Duggar's attorneys are unsure of why those pictures were taken in the first place, and argue that because the authorities did not have a warrant to take the photographs, they should be inadmissible as evidence. For precedence, the team pointed to other cases where federal courts made it a requirement to file for a warrant in attaining any photos behind the mug shots taken after arrests.
The lawyers are saying that Josh Duggar's Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment rights were being violated by the pictures. It's unclear if the judge will agree, and it's just as unclear whether or not the photos would affect the impending trial at all. But it's just the latest piece of evidence that Duggar's legal team is finding ways to dispute.
Josh Duggar's lawyers did score something of a victory recently when a judge ruled that prosecutors would work with federal investigators to acquire information the defense is seeking from various Arkansas police departments regarding alleged phone data logs connected to the IP address of Duggar's used car dealership. The logs, which were allegedly downloaded by Jonesboro and Ozark police officers, could feature information that could assist the defense's case, assuming the logs even exist.
As Josh Duggar remains out of jail after being bailed out to a third-party residence, the lead-up to his child pornography trial has been a complicated one so far, and the situation likely won't become any less so in the next three months.
