OKLAHOMA CITY - A federal judge in Oklahoma on Friday is set to decide a new sentence for "Tiger King" Joe Exotic following a 2021 appeals court ruling that his prison term on a murder-for-hire conviction should be shortened.Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, was prominently featured in the popular Netflix documentary "Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness" — a breakout series for Netflix during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic while people were forced to stay home.Maldonado-Passage was sentenced in January 2020 to 22 years in prison after he was convicted of trying to hire two different men to kill animal welfare activist and fellow "Tiger King" star Carole Baskin — his chief rival who runs a rescue sanctuary for big cats in Florida.
Baskin was not harmed.In July, a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver found that the trial court wrongly treated his two convictions separately in calculating his prison term under sentencing guidelines.The panel agreed with Maldonado-Passage that the court should have treated them as one conviction at sentencing because they both involved the same goal of killing Baskin.
According to the ruling, the court should have calculated his advisory sentencing range to be between 17 1/2 years and just under 22 years in prison, rather than between just under 22 years and 27 years in prison.The former Oklahoma zookeeper also was convicted of killing five tigers, selling tiger cubs and falsifying wildlife records.
He has maintained his innocence since the April 2019 conviction.Joseph Maldonado-Passage, known as "Joe Exotic," is pictured in an undated booking photo. (Credit: SRCSO) Maldonado-Passage was expected to attend Friday's.