How many years and counting might reality TV star Josh Duggar now get after federal jury convictions on two child pornography charges?

The question in the title of this post is prompted by this celebrity trial news from the AP: “Former reality TV star Josh Duggar was immediately taken into custody Thursday after a federal jury convicted him of downloading and possessing child pornography.” Here is more:

The jury in Fayetteville, about 140 miles (225 kilometers) northwest of Little Rock, found the 33-year-old Duggar guilty on one count each of receiving and possessing child pornography.  He faces up to 20 years in prison and fines of up to $250,000 for each count when he’s sentenced…. U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks said sentencing will happen in about four months, Fayetteville TV station KNWA reported. “We respect the jury’s verdict and we look forward to continuing this fight on appeal,” said Justin Gelfand, one of Duggar’s defense attorneys.

Duggar and his large Arkansas family starred on TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting” until the network canceled the show in 2015 following revelations that he had molested four of his sisters and a babysitter. Authorities began investigating the abuse in 2006 after receiving a tip from a family friend but concluded that the statute of limitations on any possible charges had expired.

Duggar’s parents said he had confessed to the fondling and apologized . At the time, Duggar apologized publicly for unspecified behavior and resigned as a lobbyist for the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group. Duggar later apologized for a pornography addiction and for cheating on his wife, calling himself “the biggest hypocrite ever.” The judge in the child porn case ruled that jurors could hear testimony about how in 2003, Duggar admitted to molesting four girls.  A family friend testified that Duggar told her about the abuse.

Federal authorities said they began investigating after a Little Rock police detective found child porn files were being shared by a computer traced to Duggar.  A federal agent testified in May that images depicting the sexual abuse of children, including toddlers, were downloaded in 2019 onto a computer at a car dealership Duggar owned.  Duggar’s attorney argued that someone else downloaded or uploaded the images onto Duggar’s computer.  But the jury wasn’t swayed.

This DOJ press release, titeld “Federal Jury Convicts Former Reality Television Personality for Downloading and Possessing Child Sexual Abuse Material,” provides these additional offense details and more of the sentencing specifics:

According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Joshua James Duggar, 33, of Springdale, repeatedly downloaded and viewed images and videos depicting the sexual abuse of children, including images of prepubescent children and depictions of sadistic abuse.  Duggar, a former reality television personality who appeared with his family on the TLC series “19 Kids and Counting,” installed a password-protected partition on the hard drive of his desktop computer at his used car lot in Springdale to avoid pornography-detecting software on the device.  He then accessed the partition to download child sexual abuse material from the internet multiple times over the course of three days in May 2019.  The password for the partition was the same one he used for other personal and family accounts.  Duggar downloaded the material using the dark web and online file-sharing software, viewed it, and then removed it from his computer….

Duggar was convicted of receipt and possession of child pornography. His sentencing date has not been scheduled yet.  Receipt of child pornography is punishable by a term of imprisonment of five to 20 years. Possession of child pornography depicting prepubescent children has a maximum penalty of 20 years of imprisonment as well.  A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

Though the exact sentencing range that Duggar will now face under the guidelines will depend on a lot of the particulars of his downloading activities, he is now certain to receive a federal prison term of at least five years due to his conviction on a receipt charge.  In addition, because the child porn guideline §2G2.2 has so many significant enhancement, he could be facing a guideline sentencing range of well over decade.  (Some USSC data for Fiscal Year 2020 here shows in Table 7 that the average national child porn sentence was about 8.5 years and the average sentence for child porn in the Western District of Arkansas was a few months over 7 years.  Though the child porn guidelines are quite harsh, they are the guidelines that judges depart down from most frequently.)