'Tiger King' Joe Exotic resentenced to 21 years in prison
January 28, 2022
He was jailed in 2019 for wildlife crimes and a murder-for-hire plot against animal rights activist Carole Baskin. The resentencing marks a reduction of one year from his original sentence.
Joe Exotic captured the public's attention following his role in the Netflix series "Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness"Image: Sue Ogrocki/AP/picture alliance
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A federal judge resentenced "Tiger King'' Joe Exotic to 21 years in prison on Friday, reducing his punishment by just a year, for a murder-for-hire plot against animal rights activist Carole Baskin.
The sentence comes despite pleas from the former zookeeper for leniency as he begins treatment for cancer.
"Please don't make me die in prison waiting for a chance to be free,'' he told a federal judge who resentenced him. He announced in November that he had been diagnosed with stage one prostate cancer
Both Baskin and Joe Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, were featured in the Netflix series "Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness."
Maldonado-Passage was convicted in 2019 on 21 crimes, including two for hiring hitmen to kill Baskin, and 19 counts of wildlife crimes. A judge sentenced him to 22 years in prison in 2020, but later claimed that there were errors made in court.
Baskin and fans attend proceedings
Wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, Maldonado-Passage maintained his signature mullet hairstyle. Baskin and her husband also attended the proceedings.
"He continues to harbor intense feelings of ill will toward me,'' she said. Supporters also showed up to the courtroom, wearing animal-print masks and shirts that read "Free Joe Exotic." His lawyers said they would appeal both the resentencing and petition for a new trial.
A three-judge panel of the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals 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, who runs a rescue sanctuary for big cats in Florida and had openly criticized the "Tiger King's" treatment of animals.
Maldonado-Passage was found guilty of offering $10,000 to an undercover FBI agent to kill Baskin in December 2017. In the recorded meeting, he told the agent, "Just, like, follow her into a mall parking lot and just cap her and drive off." His attorneys have argued that he wasn't being serious.
The additional counts of mistreatment of animals include a conviction for killing five tigers, selling tiger cubs and falsifying wildlife records.
More tigers now live in cages than in the wild
Threatened by illegal poaching and habitat loss, fewer than 4,000 tigers remain in the wild. But among zoos and human homes, their numbers are on the rise.
Image: picture-alliance/ZUMAPRESS/L. Jie
Admired, feared and on the brink of extinction
Tigers are secretive, solitary animals that need a lot of room to move. From lush jungles in Malaysia and Indonesia to high mountains in Bhutan and mangrove forests in India, the habitats tigers roam in search of food are being lost to deforestation and development. Much of what remains is fragmented into chunks of isolated forest surrounded by roads, farms, towns and cities.
Cages, backyards a far cry from Asian forests, savannas
With their sleek, stripey coats, piercing stare and adorable cubs, tigers are highly sought-after as exotic pets and zoo animals. This is especially true in the US — according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the total number of tigers in the country "likely exceeds the numbers found in the wild." It's estimated there could be from 2,000 to 5,000 tigers living in the state of Texas alone.
Only half of tiger cubs survive in the wild. Mothers may refuse to feed their offspring or abandon them for unknown reasons. In captivity, zoos have overcome this by getting female dogs to takeover the feeding of tiger cubs. The dogs don't seem to know the difference between their own offspring and the tiger cubs, which take around the same amount of time to wean.
Image: dapd
Three subspecies already lost to extinction
There are nine subspecies of tiger, of which six survive today. The differences are mostly a reflection of extreme climatic changes over thousands of years. The Siberian — or Amur — tiger (pictured), for example, is bigger and hairier than other subspecies. This means it can retain heat in the frosty Siberian wilderness, as it has a smaller surface area relative to its overall mass.
Image: picture-alliance/All Canada Photos/F. Pali
Tigers and lions live side-by-side, right? No!
While the six surviving tiger subspecies don’t have a lot of genetic variation, they are each uniquely adapted to their habitats — which are in Asia, not Africa. Some live in tropical forests, others in dry forests, some in marshes and wetlands and some at elevations of 3,000 meters (10,000 feet). That makes it more difficult to relocate them to different parts of the world to boost numbers.
Although far from being the only issue facing the great cat, climate change poses a major threat to their habitat. A recent study, published in Science of the Total Environment, predicted that sea level rise in the Sundarbans — a mangrove forest stretching across India and Bangladesh — will likely decimate the local Bengal tiger population, the only subspecies adapted to living in mangroves.
