An Oklahoma City judge reduced a year to a 22-year prison sentence for Joe Exotic, seen here in 2013, who was convicted in a hire-killer conspiracy against his rival Carole Baskin .
Sue Ogrocki / AP
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Sue Ogrocki / AP
An Oklahoma City judge reduced a year to a 22-year prison sentence for Joe Exotic, seen here in 2013, who was convicted in a hire-killer conspiracy against his rival Carole Baskin .
Sue Ogrocki / AP
OKLAHOMA CITY – A federal judge sentenced “Tiger King” Joe Exotic to 21 years in prison on Friday, reducing his sentence to just one year despite pleas from a former zoo employee about drilling. pink when he started treatment for early-stage cancer.
“Please don’t make me die in prison waiting for my chance to be free,” he tearfully told a federal judge who had resented him for the murder of a tenant.
Joe Exotic – whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage – has been convicted in a case involving animal rights activist Carole Baskin. Both were featured in Netflix’s “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness”.
Wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, Maldonado-Passage, 58, still wears her signature mullet hairstyle, but her bleach blonde hair has faded to browns and grays.
Baskin and her husband, Howard Baskin, also attended the proceedings, and she said she feared that Maldonado-Passage might threaten her.
“He continued to harbor strong feelings of malice towards me,” she told the judge.
Baskin said that even while Maldonado-Passage was in prison, she continued to receive “despicable, abusive and threatening communications” over the past two years. She told the judge she believes Maldonado-Passage poses an even more serious threat to her as he has a larger set of supporters because of the popularity of the Netflix series.
Maldonado-Passage’s attorneys told the judge their client was suffering from stage one prostate cancer, which, along with a disease that compromises his immune system, makes him particularly vulnerable. hurt by COVID-19.
Stage one prostate cancer means it has been found early and has not spread. Maldonado-Passage has previously said he plans to delay treatment until after revenge. Federal officials say Maldonado-Passage will require up to eight weeks of radiation treatment and will be unable to walk for the duration of the treatment.
His attorney Amy Hanna told the judge he did not receive proper medical care inside the federal prison system and that the lengthy prison sentence was “a death sentence for Joe that he didn’t deserve.” experience.”
Prosecutors also told the judge on Friday that Maldonado-Passage received a disciplinary sentence in September for possession of a pirated cell phone and unauthorized headset that was not included in his pre-sentence report. . Palk added that Maldonado-Passage had written four letters about the discipline before, though he described it as “relatively minor and non-violent.”
Friday’s court proceedings come after a federal appeals court ruled last year that the prison term he is serving on a murder-for-hire charge should be shortened.
Supporters filled the courtroom, some wearing animal-print masks and shirts that read “Free Joe Exotic.” His lawyers said they would appeal the verdict and ask for a new trial.
Attorney Molly Parmer told reporters after the hearing: “The defense submitted a series of attachments showing that the government was excessively involved in creating the offense for which he was convicted. .
“We will continue to litigate after conviction, but we have already previewed for the court the evidence we have through the post-conviction investigation.”
In January 2020, the former zookeeper was sentenced to 22 years in prison after he was found guilty of trying to hire two different men to kill Baskin. A three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Maldonado-Passage that the court should have treated them as a convict because they both had the same goal of killing Baskin, operates a big cat rescue sanctuary in Florida and has criticized Maldonado-Passage’s treatment of the animals.
Prosecutors say Maldonado-Passage offered $10,000 to an undercover FBI agent to kill Baskin during a taped meeting in December 2017. In the recording, he tells the agent, “It’s like following her into a mall parking lot and just gagging her and driving away.” Maldonado-Passage’s attorneys said their client – who used to run a zoo in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, about 65 miles (105 km) south of Oklahoma City – was not taking it seriously.
Maldonado-Passage, who maintained his chastity, was also found guilty of killing five tigers, selling tiger cubs and falsifying wildlife records.
