⚖️ Joe Exotic got 21 years for murder-for-hire; Baskin won $1M

The Tiger King's paperwork reads like a reunion-show script, and every twist has a stamp on it. On April 3, 2019, a federal jury in Oklahoma City found Joe Exotic, legal name Joseph Maldonado-Passage, guilty of two counts of hiring someone to murder Carole Baskin, eight counts of violating the Lacey Act and nine counts of violating the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Oklahoma said.

The jury, the same office said, needed only a few hours. The Oklahoman reported that the 12 jurors agreed unanimously and that he showed no reaction as the verdict was read.

The money that started it

The feud has a price tag. The Tenth Circuit's opinion says Baskin sued Maldonado-Passage for copyright and trademark infringement after he renamed his road shows "Big Cat Rescue Entertainment" and some people confused her brand with his, and that she won a $1 million judgment. The court says he then filed for bankruptcy, which he blamed on his legal fees.

The Hollywood Reporter, citing Courthouse News, put the order at nearly $1 million and credited it to Baskin's Big Cat Rescue, the nonprofit she runs. In June 2020 a federal judge found that the zoo land had been fraudulently transferred to his mother to keep it from creditors, and ordered the property handed to Big Cat Rescue, per The Hollywood Reporter and KOKH-TV.

"It was a rivalry made in heaven."

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, opinion of July 14, 2021

The plot, as the court describes it

According to the Tenth Circuit, Maldonado-Passage arranged for his park employee Allen Glover to travel to Florida to kill Baskin and paid him $3,000 up front. Glover testified he never really intended to go through with it; the court says he "got no further than partying on Florida beaches."

A month later, the opinion says, Maldonado-Passage discussed the same plan with a man named Mark, who was an undercover FBI agent, and Mark agreed to do it for $10,000. The Oklahoman reported that prosecutors played a recording in which he said: "Just like follow her into a mall parking lot and just cap her and drive off."

His side told a different story. His trial lawyer, Bill Earley, told jurors the allegations were "manufactured," The Oklahoman reported, and the Washington Post reported that Maldonado-Passage said in court testimony and in an interview that he was never serious about killing Baskin.

22 years, then 21

On January 22, 2020, Judge Scott L. Palk sentenced him to 264 months, with 108 months on each murder-for-hire count running consecutively, according to the Justice Department. Baskin told the court, per the Washington Post, that if he is ever released her life and her family's lives "will return to what it was like during the decade leading up to his arrest."

On July 14, 2021, the Tenth Circuit affirmed the convictions but vacated the sentence. It held that the trial court should have grouped the two murder-for-hire counts, because both aimed at the same goal of killing Baskin. The AP reported that this moved the advisory range to between 17 and a half years and just under 22 years.

Resentencing came on January 28, 2022. A federal judge cut the sentence by a year, to 21 years, the AP reported. Baskin testified at that hearing, per the AP, and his attorneys argued for less, alleging "imperfect entrapment, sentencing manipulation, and outrageous government conduct."

"He continues to harbor intense feelings of ill will toward me"

Carole Baskin, testifying at the January 2022 resentencing, per the Associated Press

Maldonado-Passage maintains his innocence, the AP reported. His lawyer John Phillips told The New York Times the team had new evidence and claimed Howard Baskin once spoke with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service about infiltrating the zoo. The Times reported that Mr. Baskin did not immediately respond to its requests for comment. That is a lawyer's claim, not a court finding, and the receipts below do not show it being decided.

MissDrama's read: a $1 million trademark fight, a $3,000 down payment and a one-year trim after an appeal. The receipts do the plotting; the paperwork needs no help.