Josh Duggar’s jail term has been extended

TV

By Ashley Hume, Fox News

March 17, 2023 | 12:14 p.m

Josh Duggar’s 12.5-year sentence has been extended by nearly two months, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website.

The 35-year-old disgraced reality star, who was convicted of child pornography in 2021, originally had a release date of August 12, 2032.

Earlier this week, online prison records for Duggar indicated his release had been delayed until August 22, 2032, according to Insider.

However, the records now list his release date as October 2, 2032.

The sentence extension comes as Duggar is reportedly in solitary confinement, where he was placed after allegedly being caught with a smuggled cell phone last month.

The “19 Kids and Counting” alum has served his sentence at FCI Seagoville low-security federal prison near Dallas.

A Duggar attorney and a representative from FCI Seagoville did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

A federal jury in Arkansas found Duggar guilty in December 2021 on charges related to the receipt of child pornography and possession of child pornography.

Last May, he was sentenced to 151 months in prison. Duggar was transferred from Washington County Jail in his home state of Arkansas to FCI Seagoville in Texas last June.

Duggar’s lawyers are trying to overturn his conviction. At a federal appeals court hearing in February, they argued that investigators violated his rights by confiscating the phone he used to call his attorney during the search that found the images.

Duggar was arrested in April 2021 after a Little Rock, Arkansas police detective discovered that child pornography files were being shared by a computer that was traced to Duggar.

Investigators testified that in 2019 child sexual abuse images were downloaded onto a computer at a dealer he owned.

Prosecutors said the computer Duggar used had a monitoring program to report his activities to his wife, Anne Duggarbut the images and video were downloaded after installing separate software that allowed him to download items without being detected.

In addition, prosecutors said Duggar was free to leave the scene and instructed not to talk to officers without an attorney, and he was also with two other people whose cell phones were not seized, indicating that “he was a option to speak to a lawyer.” even though the officers had clearly seized the phone appropriately at the start of their search.

Duggar’s attorneys argued, “What federal agents did is they physically took the phone out of his hand and from that point on deprived him of the ability to communicate with his legal counsel, as was his constitutional right.”