Joe Exotic (of "Tiger King" fame) prevails on technical guideline issue to secure resentencing on Tenth Circuit appeal

It seems like a very long time ago that everyone was talking about Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin.  The must-see Netflix documentary "Tiger King" about their ugly rivalry dropped just as we were all going into pandemic lock down, and it was only about 18 months ago that we were all talking about Joe and Carole and their cats.  That is a lot less time than the 264 months (22 years) that Joe Exotic was sentenced to after his federal jury convictions for multiple wildlife crimes and two counts of using interstate facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire plots to kill Carole Baskin.

But what is old is new again thanks to today's Tenth Circuit panel decision in US v. Joseph Maldonado-Passage, No. 20-6010 (10th Cir. July 14, 2021) (available here).  Here is how the panel opinion gets started:

It was a rivalry made in heaven.  Joseph Maldonado-Passage, the self-proclaimed “Tiger King,” owned what might have been the nation’s largest population of big cats in captivity. Carole Baskin was an animal-rights activist who fought for legislation prohibiting the private possession of big cats.  He bred lions and tigers to create big-cat hybrids — some the first of their kind.  She saw the crossbreeding of big cats as evil.  He built his business around using cubs for entertainment.  She protested his events as animal abuse and urged boycotts.

The rivalry intensified after Baskin sued Maldonado-Passage for copyright and trademark infringement and won a million-dollar judgment.  Maldonado-Passage responded by firing a barrage of violent threats at Baskin, mostly online.  And he didn’t stop there.  Before long, he was plotting her murder.  Twice, within weeks, he set about hiring men to kill Baskin — one, an employee at his park; the other, an undercover FBI agent.

Maldonado-Passage soon faced a federal indictment charging him with twenty-one counts, most for wildlife crimes, but two for using interstate facilities in the commission of his murder-for-hire plots.  A jury convicted Maldonado-Passage on all counts, and the court sentenced him to 264 months’ imprisonment.

On appeal, he disputes his murder-for-hire convictions, arguing that the district court erred by allowing Baskin, a listed government witness, to attend the entire trial proceedings.  He also disputes his sentence, arguing that the trial court erred by not grouping his two murder-for-hire convictions in calculating his advisory Guidelines range.  On this second point, he contends that the Guidelines required the district court to group the two counts because they involved the same victim and two or more acts or transactions that were connected by a common criminal objective: murdering Baskin.

We hold that the district court acted within its discretion by allowing Baskin to attend the full trial proceedings despite her being listed as a government witness, but that it erred by not grouping the two murder-for-hire convictions at sentencing.  Accordingly, we affirm the conviction but vacate the sentence and remand for resentencing.

As noted by the 10th Circuit panel, correction of the guideline error will shift Joe Exotic's advisory sentencing range down to 210 to 262 months from the 262 to 327 months used at his initial sentencing.  So Joe will still be facing a hefty guideline range, but maybe he will be better able to advocate and secure a below-guideline range at an upcoming resentencing.