US Supreme Court won’t reconsider ‘Tiger King’ Joe Exotic’s murder-for-hire conviction

Joe Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, at his zoo in Wynnewood, Oklahoma in August 2013. Photo / The Washington Post

The US Supreme Court has pulled the plug on a season finale of Tiger King – at least when it comes to his bid to appeal his 21-year sentence for plotting to kill a rival.

On Monday, the justices declined to review the criminal case of exotic cat breeder Joseph Maldonado-Passage, also known as Joe Exotic, the self-styled “Tiger King”. The decision means Maldonado-Passage’s conviction will stand. As is typical when declining to review a case, the high court did not outline its reasons.

Maldonado-Passage, 63, drew widespread attention in 2020 after the airing of the Netflix documentary Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness. It told the story of Maldonado-Passage’s bitter rivalry with animal rights activist Carole Baskin, which resulted in his attempts to silence her.

In April 2019, an Oklahoma jury found Maldonado-Passage guilty on two counts of hiring people to kill Baskin, one of them an undercover FBI agent. The jurors also found him guilty on charges that he had killed multiple tigers, sold tiger cubs and falsified wildlife records.

He was later sentenced to 22 years in prison. He is incarcerated at Federal Medical Centre in Fort Worth, where inmates receive care for serious medical conditions. Maldonado-Passage has told news outlets he is battling prostate cancer.

Maldonado-Passage’s attempts to kill Baskin did not succeed, and the Florida activist has urged the courts to keep him behind bars.

Maldonado-Passage has maintained his innocence, saying he was not serious about killing Baskin. He also denied he had sold tigers illegally. And he has said that he fatally shot five tigers and buried them at his zoo only because they were unwell and needed to be “euthanised”.

The US Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit upheld the convictions, although it ordered the trial court to resentence Maldonado-Passage, saying the penalty had been improperly calculated.

“Please don’t make me die in prison waiting for a chance to be free,” he told the trial court in 2022 before the resentencing, according to the Associated Press. Supporters in attendance wore shirts that read “Free Joe Exotic”.

The trial court shaved a year off the sentence.

In his appeal to the Supreme Court, Maldonado-Passage’s attorneys argued that there were problems with witness testimony at trial. New evidence showed furthermore, they added, that the killings of the tigers were “medically necessary”.

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