A federal judge re-sentenced the Tiger King star, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, to 21 years in prison on Friday, Fox News reports.Unfortunately, the judge rejected pleas from the former zookeeper to free him from prison.He was earlier convicted and sentenced to 22 years in a murder-for-hire case involving animal welfare activist Carole Baskin, which was chronicled in Netflix’s Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness.Maldonado-Passage was resentenced after a federal appeals court ruled last year that improper sentencing guidelines were used.Lawyers for the former Oklahoma zookeeper said he was postponing off his cancer treatments until after his resentencing.The 58-year-old was sentenced in January 2020 after he was convicted of trying to hire two different men to kill Baskin. A three-judge panel of the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Maldonado-Passage that the court should have treated them as one conviction at sentencing because they both involved the same goal of killing Baskin, 60, who runs a rescue sanctuary for big cats in Florida and had criticised Maldonado-Passage’s treatment of animals.Netflix’s Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness was a breakout hit as people were forced to stay home in the early weeks of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020.Prosecutors said Maldonado-Passage offered $US14,000 ($20,000) to an undercover FBI agent to kill Baskin during a recorded December 2017 meeting. In the recording, he told the agent, “Just like follow her into a mall parking lot and just cap her and drive off.” Maldonado-Passage’s lawyers have said their client — who once operated a zoo in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, about 105 kilometres south of Oklahoma City — wasn’t being serious.Maldonado-Passage, who has maintained his innocence, was further convicted of killing five tigers, selling tiger cubs and falsifying wildlife records. His lawyers asked for a lesser sentence than what the guidelines call for, alleging “imperfect entrapment, sentencing manipulation, and outrageous government conduct”.“From decisions made in the initial stages of the investigation to charging decisions to overzealous sentencing recommendations, one thing remains clear: this case was about doing whatever it took to put Mr Maldonado-Passage behind bars for as long as possible,” his lawyers wrote in a sentencing memorandum.Federal prosecutors said in court records that they would defer recommending a new sentence for Maldonado-Passage because of the allegations he raised.“In the unlikely event that any of these claims withstand scrutiny and ultimately are determined to be credible, those developments could impact the United States’ ultimate sentencing recommendation” because the prosecutors are obligated to investigate them, US Attorney Robert Troester wrote.This article originally appeared on Fox News and was reproduced with permission
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