Supreme Court turns away ‘Tiger King’ Joe Exotic’s appeal of murder-for-hire conviction

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to consider throwing out the 2019 conviction of Joe Exotic, the star of Netflix’s “Tiger King,” for his role in a murder-for-hire plot against rival animal rights activist Carole Baskin.

The former zookeeper, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, is serving a 21-year prison sentence after a federal jury found him guilty of paying a man to kill Baskin, another star of the documentary series and a frequent critic of his animal park. He was also convicted of falsifying wildlife records and violating the Endangered Species Act.

Alexander Roots, a lawyer for the TV star, told the justices that the case arose out of an “intense personal, litigation, operational, and even political, rivalry between two of America’s two largest big cat exhibitors.”

Baskin founded the Florida rescue facility Big Cat Rescue and was a major advocate of the Big Cat Public Safety Act, which limited possession of big cats and cross-breeds to wildlife sanctuaries, state universities and certified zoos, among other changes. Former President Biden signed it into law in 2022.

Roots argued that trial errors warranted review of the case.

“By denying any hearing and by refusing to evaluate the evidence as a whole, the lower courts departed from principles that safeguard every criminal prosecution in the Nation,” he wrote in Maldonado-Passage’s petition to the court.

The Justice Department waived its right to respond.

At Maldonado-Passage’s trial in 2019, prosecutors said he hired two men to kill Baskin, one of whom was an undercover FBI agent. They also said he personally shot and killed five tigers in October 2017 and sold and offered to sell tiger cubs in interstate commerce.

With little luck on appeal, Maldonado-Passage has also asked President Trump to pardon him.

The first request came during Trump’s first term in the form of a handwritten letter to the White House in September 2020; Trump said at the time he would “take a look.” Maldonado-Passage asked President Biden for a pardon in 2021 with no success. And last year, he renewed his request to Trump after garnering support from public figures including Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.).

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