‘Tiger King’ Joe Exotic is hoping to have his time in captivity reduced after a US federal judge in Oklahoma set a January 28 date for re-sentencing the Netflix TV star.

A federal appeals court in July ruled that Exotic – whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage and who was the titular character of the hit Netflix TV series Tiger King – should have his 22-year sentence scaled back. 

The US Court of Appeals in Denver determined the trial court wrongly treated two murder-for-hire convictions separately in calculating his prison term.

The 58-year-old was jailed over a plot to kill fellow big-cat enthusiast Carole Baskin, who also appeared in the Netflix series.

Maldonado-Passage was in January 2020 sentenced to 22 years in prison but the appeals court said his advisory sentencing range should have been between 17-and-a-half years and just under 22 years in prison, rather than between just under 22 years and 27 years.

Maldonado-Passage, who maintains his innocence, was also sentenced for killing five tigers, selling tiger cubs and falsifying wildlife records.

Last month, attorneys for the former Oklahoma zookeeper said he was delaying cancer treatment until after his re-sentencing. 

Maldonado-Passage announced in November he has prostate cancer and was transferred from a federal medical centre in Fort Worth, Texas, to a similar facility in Butner, North Carolina.

AAP

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