Reply to Josh Duggar arrested and in federal custody

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I doubt Anna turned him in, but I absolutely do not think we can assume Anna knew he had CP on his hard drive. [/quote]

She's too brain washed and groomed over the decades to turn in Josh (unless it was an anonymous tip as mentioned upthread) and the hard drive, presumably, was on the computer at the car dealership (which is why the dealership was raided as opposed to their residence).

On the flip side, if she did turn in Josh, she would be protected by spousal privilige, no? Or immunity of some sort?[/quote]

Spousal privilege and immunity are two different things.  Spousal privilege goes to whether she can be compelled to testify against him, and if she can choose to testify willingly against him him on certain subjects.  Immunity goes to whether she can be prosecuted for her own crimes.

On the latter, if she turned Josh in upon finding the material and had no role in his crimes, she wouldn't face any criminal culpability.  If she in any way participated in his crimes but later confessed it to law enforcement and agreed to help them, she could still be subject to prosecution but may have negotiated some kind of deal in advance, or could be given some amount of leniency by prosecutors for having turned him in.

As for spousal privilege, there are two types - spousal witness privilege, and marital communications privilege.  Spousal witness privilege means that, as long as they are married, prosecutors cannot compel someone to testify against their spouse in a criminal matter.  That privilege belongs to the non-defendant spouse alone, though, and if the non-defendant spouse decided they were willing to testify against the defendant, the defendant can do nothing to stop them as long as they aren't testifying about anything covered by the marital communication privilege.  Many states have abolished the spousal witness privilege, though, so I don't know whether that would be available in this case at all.

The marital communications privilege basically makes any communications between spouses during a marriage confidential.  The privilege belongs to both spouses, so even if a non-defendant spouse wanted to testify about those communications, the would not be permitted to do so unless the defendant spouse agreed to waive the privilege.  This privilege continues after divorce.  This privilege does not affect a non-defendant's spouse to testify about anything that isn't a communication between the spouses (e.g., what time your spouse came home on a particular day, events or behaviors you witnessed, etc.).[/quote]

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