The 10th District Court of Appeals in Denver on Wednesday upheld the conviction for the murder of Joe Exotic, the star of the hit Netflix show “Tiger King,” but ruled that he should be re-convicted of misinterpreting his crimes.
Joseph Maldonado Passage
Joe Maldonado-Passage – who also went by Joe Exotic – was sentenced to 22 years in prison in January 2020 after a federal jury found him guilty of an attempted murder targeting Carole Baskin, owner of a Florida-based tiger sanctuary.
He was also found guilty of falsifying wildlife records and violating the Endangered Species Act by shooting and killing five tigers.
Maldonado-Passage argued in his appeal that Baskin should not have attended the trial because she was listed as a government witness.
However, the appellate court ruled Wednesday that “the district court acted at its discretion” in not removing Baskin – who was also a victim in the case – from the courtroom.
The court agreed with Maldonado-Passage that the District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma “was wrong in not combining the two labor murder convictions in the sentencing.”
“Accordingly,” wrote Judge Gregory A. Phillips in the report, “we confirm the conviction, but waive the sentence and come to re-conviction in custody.”
Maldonado-Passage had been convicted of two murder charges for hiring two people – a clerk in his park and an undercover FBI agent – to kill Baskin.
But the district court should have merged those two convictions when considering sentencing guidelines, Phillips wrote.
The grouping of convictions would mean that Maldonado-Passage would consider a 210-262 month sentence – versus the guidelines of 262 to 327 months the court ultimately used.
The Maldonado Passage took America by storm last year when “Tiger King” shot to the top of every watchlist in the first few months of the coronavirus pandemic.
But his eccentric personality took a dark turn when a federal grand jury indicted him in 2018 for attempting to kill Baskin, and evidence surfaced that he killed tigers in his park to make room for other big cats create.
Despite being behind bars in a Texas federal prison, Maldonado-Passage continues to make headlines.
In January, his team was so confident he would be on President Donald Trump’s pardon list that they prepared a limo and hair and cloakroom team to bring him back to freedom.
But Trump never pardoned him.
Exotics attorneys say he is likely to die in jail for health reasons, despite the man who ran for governor of Oklahoma again seeks a presidential pardon.