"Tiger King" star Joe Exotic to be re-sentenced for Carole Baskin murder plot
CBSN
A district court on Wednesday ordered Joseph Maldonado-Passage, also known as Joe Exotic, to be re-sentenced for the murder-for-hire plot targeting animal activist Carole Baskin. Despite the re-sentencing, which is the result of two charges being improperly separated, the convictions still stand.
Maldonado-Passage, the 58-year-old star of the "Tiger King" docu-series, was convicted in 2019 on 21 counts: Two for hiring hitmen to kill Baskin, and 19 counts of wildlife crimes. In 2020, he was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Maldonado-Passage appealed the decision on two grounds. First, he argued that the court erred in allowing Baskin to attend the entire trial, because she was also serving as a witness and could have changed her testimony based on what she heard. He also claimed his two murder-for hire convictions were wrongly separated, arguing that district court guidelines require the two counts to be grouped together since the same victim was involved and because the acts were connected by the common criminal objective of murdering Baskin.Ashley White received her earliest combat action badge from the United States Army soon after the first lieutenant arrived in Afghanistan. The silver military award, recognizing soldiers who've been personally engaged by an attacker during conflict, was considered an achievement in and of itself as well as an affirming rite of passage for the newly deployed. White had earned it for using her own body to shield a group of civilian women and children from gunfire that broke out in the midst of her third mission in Kandahar province. All of them survived. She never mentioned the badge to anyone in her battalion.