OKLAHOMA CITY — A federal decide in Oklahoma on Monday set a Jan. 28 date for the resentencing of “Tiger King” Joe Exotic.
U.S. District Choose Scott Palk set the resentencing for 10 a.m. and granted the defendant’s request to be transported to Oklahoma Metropolis for the listening to.
A federal appeals courtroom in July dominated that Joe Unique, whose actual identify is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, ought to get a shorter sentence. The U.S. Court docket of Appeals for the tenth Circuit in Denver decided the trial courtroom wrongly handled two murder-for-hire convictions individually in calculating his jail time period.
Maldonado-Passage was sentenced in January 2020 to 22 years in prison. However the appeals courtroom mentioned the courtroom ought to have calculated his advisory sentencing vary between 17 1/2 years and slightly below 22 years in jail, somewhat than between slightly below 22 years and 27 years in jail.
Maldonado-Passage, who maintains his innocence, additionally was sentenced for killing 5 tigers, promoting tiger cubs and falsifying wildlife information.
Final month, attorneys for the previous Oklahoma zookeeper mentioned he was delaying most cancers remedy till after his resentencing. Maldonado-Passage announced in November that he has prostate most cancers, and he was transferred from a federal medical center in Fort Price, Texas, to a federal medical middle in Butner, North Carolina.
In a separate motion, a pair who succeeded Maldonado-Passage in working the Better Wynnewood Unique Animal Park and Tiger King Park agreed to give up their rights to 97 animals of endangered or threatened species and 47 different animals coated by the Animal Welfare Act.
Jeffrey and Lauren Lowe, who’re former mates of Maldonado-Passage, additionally agreed in a Dec. 23 consent decree filed in federal courtroom in Muskogee, Oklahoma, to by no means once more exhibit animals.
Federal brokers seized the 97 endangered animals, together with 68 large cats and a jaguar, from Tiger King Park in Thackerville, Oklahoma, in two seizures final Could and August. Federal officers accused the Lowes of harming and harassing the animals.
