Tiger King star Joe Exotic, who has been incarcerated in Fort Worth for his role in a foiled murder-for-hire plot, suffered his latest legal setback on Wednesday, when an appeals court in Colorado denied his request for a new trial.
Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage (né Schreibvogel), is serving a 21-year sentence at the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, after being convicted in 2019 of hiring two men, including an undercover FBI agent, to kill rival Carole Baskin.
Maldonado-Passage, a former Oklahoma zookeeper, was also convicted of breaking federal wildlife laws, including the Endangered Species Act, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Oklahoma.
He had fatally shot five of his tigers without a veterinarian present, officials said.
News Roundups
Maldonado-Passagefiled a motion for a new trial in 2022, citing newly discovered evidence that showed “multiple witnesses recanted their trial testimony and that the government unlawfully concealed evidence related to witness immunity agreements and the tigers’ health,” according to court documents.
An Oklahoma district court denied that motion in 2023 and Maldonado-Passage appealed its ruling.
On Wednesday, Judge Allison H. Eid of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver affirmed the lower court’s decision to deny the request for a new trial, writing in a court filing that Maldonado-Passage had “waived several of his arguments on appeal.”
In an X post also on Wednesday, Maldonado-Passage asked President Donald Trump “to make this right and allow me to go home.”
“8 years of my life I have lost,” he wrote. “My parents have died, and I have nothing left to show for 55 years of hard work.”
Maldonado-Passage rose to fame through the Netflix pandemic hit Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness.
The true crime series documented an eccentric but bitter feud between Maldonado-Passage and Baskin, who owned a big cat sanctuary in Florida.
The two had been embroiled in a yearslong legal battle dating back to a 2011 lawsuit in which Baskin accused Maldonado-Passage of trademark infringement over images and logos he used that Baskin alleged were similar to those of her Big Cat Rescue in Florida.
Baskin, an animal rights activist, had also accused him of mistreating the wild cats in his possession.
Maldonado-Passage has maintained his innocence regarding the wildlife and murder-for-hire convictions.
In the X post on Wednesday, he again said there was evidence U.S. attorneys in Oklahoma City had withheld.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Oklahoma could not be immediately reached for comment by phone on Thursday afternoon about his claims.