Tiger King’s Joe Exotic to Be Resentenced Later This Month

Joe Exotic is currently serving a 22-year prison sentence for a 2020 conviction on hiring a hitman to kill Carole Baskin and 17 associated wildlife charges. Despite a federal judge throwing that sentence out last year, Exotic—real name Joseph Maldonado-Passage—has remained in prison. Now, he’ll finally get a new sentence. Monday, a new federal judge in Oklahoma ruled the former exotic animal exhibitor will be resentenced on January 28th.

At the time of his sentence vacation, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled two of his charges shouldn’t have been sentenced separately. The court calculated that 22 years would be a maximum sentence, even suggesting Exotic could spend around 17.5 in prison instead of the previously sentenced maximum.

Amongst the crimes he’s been convicted of include the killing of five tigers, illegally selling tiger cubs, and falsifying wildlife records. Exotic previously said he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and was subsequently transferred to a federal medical center in North Carolina.

“You know, I talk to Dylan three times a day on the telephone, and we love each other very much,” Exotic recently said about his relationship with his husband Dylan said. “He has been out there alone for two and half years because the first six months he lived in a car because we lost our house. The guy has been through hell and he has stood by my side the entire time and we were talking about a divorce a few weeks ago so he could move on and we talked about it some more and we decided to stay married.”

“You know, if [Dylan] needs to move on I have to respect that, I can’t expect him to just hang on forever,” Exotic added. “He has told me time and time again … if I make it out of here alive, I still have a home to come to. So, he said he is not going anywhere, all right? That is all I can say because that is all I know.”

Both seasons of Tiger King are now streaming on Netflix.