United States v. Duggar

• Docket Number: 22-2178
• Decision Date: 07 August 2023
• Parties: United States of America Plaintiff-Appellee v. Joshua James Duggar Defendant-Appellant
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

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United States of America Plaintiff-Appellee
v.
Joshua James Duggar Defendant-Appellant

No. 22-2178

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit

August 7, 2023

Submitted: February 16, 2023

Appeal from United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas - Fayetteville

Before SMITH, Chief Judge, STRAS and KOBES, Circuit Judges.

STRAS, CIRCUIT JUDGE

Joshua Duggar challenges his conviction for receiving child pornography. See 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(2), (b)(1). Although he seeks to suppress incriminating statements and get a new trial, we affirm.

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I.

Duggar used a computer to download hundreds of child-pornography images. Law enforcement tracked the images to a used-car dealership he owned by identifying the internet-protocol address of the computer.

Not long after, a team of federal agents arrived with a search warrant. Two walked "directly" up to Duggar, who pulled out a cell phone and said he "wanted to call his attorney." But before he could complete the call, they seized it because it "was considered evidence."

When asked whether he would like "to discuss further details" about the warrant, he said yes. Without waiting for an explanation, Duggar blurted out, "[w]hat is this about? Has somebody been downloading child pornography?" He then let it slip that he was "familiar with" file-sharing software and had installed it on "all of" his electronic devices, including "the computer in the office."

A grand jury indicted Duggar for possessing and receiving child pornography. See 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(2), (a)(5)(B), (b)(1)-(2). Before trial, he filed a motion to suppress the statements he made at the scene without his lawyer present. The district court^[1] denied the motion, concluding he was not in custody at the time. See United States v. Griffin, 922 F.2d 1343, 1349 (8th Cir. 1990).

Those statements took on a critical role at trial. And so did the metadata from his iPhone, which placed it at the dealership when the child pornography was downloaded.

Duggar, for his part, tried to point the finger elsewhere. Looking to convince the jury that it faced "a classic, old-fashioned 'whodunit,'" he suggested that a

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former employee, who happened to be a convicted sex offender, was to blame. Duggar ultimately decided not to call him to the stand, however, because the district court ruled that any mention of the employee's prior conviction was off-limits. See Fed. R. Evid. 403, 609(a)(1)(A).

The jury found Duggar guilty as charged. After entering judgment on the receipt-of-child-pornography count, see United States v. Soto, 58 F.4th 977, 982 (8th Cir. 2023), the district court sentenced him to 151 months in prison.

II.

Duggar believes that the district court's decision to stop him from asking about the employee's prior sex-offense conviction deprived him of his right to present a complete defense. Our review is de novo. See United States v. West, 829 F.3d 1013, 1017 (8th Cir. 2016).

A.

The Fifth and Sixth Amendments "guarantee[] criminal defendants a meaningful opportunity to present a complete defense." United States v. Clay, 883 F.3d 1056, 1060 (8th Cir. 2018) (per curiam) (citation omitted); see U.S. Const. amends. V, VI. What it includes is subject to debate, but there seems to be little doubt that it applies to evidence "show[ing] that someone else committed the crime." Holmes v. South Carolina, 547 U.S. 319, 327 (2006). Nevertheless, the Supreme Court has struck a balance to accommodate other "legitimate interests in the criminal trial process": ordinary evidentiary rules still apply, except when they "'infring[e] upon a weighty interest of the accused' and are 'arbitrary' or 'disproportionate to the purposes they are designed to serve.'" Id. at 324-26 (quoting United States v. Scheffer, 523 U.S. 303, 308-09 (1998)).

The district court, for its part, tried to strike a balance too. It recognized that Duggar should have an opportunity "to create reasonable doubt" by "call[ing]" the

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former employee to testify and asking whether he was "present on the car lot" when the downloads occurred. But he could not impeach him with a prior sex crime or introduce "speculative" testimony. See Fed.R.Evid. 609(a) (explaining that a prior felony conviction "must be admitted, subject to Rule 403" to attack "a witness's character for truthfulness"); United States v. Thibeaux, 784 F.3d 1221, 1226 (8th Cir. 2015). The reason, according to the court, was to prevent confusion: the jury might think he did it because he was a sex offender, even though the conviction was only potentially admissible as impeachment evidence. See Fed.R.Evid. 403 (allowing courts to "exclude relevant evidence if its probative value is substantially outweighed by a danger of . . . confusing the issues"); see also Paul F. Rothstein, Federal Rules of Evidence 508-09 (3d ed. 2019) (explaining that "the similarity of the past crime" is "a factor militating against admission . . . because of the...