The federal appeals court based in Denver has weighed in on the case of Oklahoma’s “Tiger King,” upholding the murder-for-hire convictions of the subject of Netflix’s popular 2020 documentary.

The Tiger King, Joseph Maldonado-Passage, who also goes by “Joe Exotic” and other aliases, is serving 264 months in prison for wildlife crimes and for using interstate facilities in the commission of a plot to kill Florida wildlife activist Carole Baskin. The antagonistic relationship between the two was a key plotline of Netflix’s multipart series that more than 64 million households viewed in just one month since its March 2020 release.

At times, the July 14 opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit mirrored the theatrical nature of the Tiger King’s own biography.

“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,” wrote Judge Gregory A. Phillips for the three-member appellate panel that heard Maldonado-Passage’s case. “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.”

The panel did agree with Maldonado-Passage on one of his claims: that the trial court should have grouped together the charges that arose from his hiring of two different hitmen to murder Baskin. The decision lowered the advisory range of Maldonado-Passage’s sentencing, from a maximum of 327 months to a calculated maximum of 262 months.

The Tiger King operated the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park, known for housing big cats. Baskin owns Big Cat Rescue in Tampa, which she describes as a sanctuary for dozens of exotic cats. She tried to discourage venues from hosting Maldonado-Passage’s show, and Maldonado-Passage in turn named his road shows “Big Cat Rescue Entertainment,” prompting Baskin to sue for copyright and trademark infringement.

After Maldonado-Passage filed for bankruptcy as a result of the lawsuit, he began posting inflammatory videos about Baskin online.

“He even recorded a video in which he fired a gun at a ‘Carole blowup doll’,” Phillips noted in the appellate court’s narrative.

In August 2017, the Tiger King enlisted one of his employees to murder Baskin. The worker “got no further than partying on Florida beaches” and never saw Baskin, the court explained. A friend of Maldonado-Passage’s then introduced him to a man who was actually an undercover federal agent. Maldonado-Passage offered to pay him $10,000 to kill Baskin.

Ultimately, Maldonado-Passage received more than one dozen counts for violating the Endangered Species Act, plus the two murder-related charges. During his trial, he attempted to exclude Baskin from the courtroom because she was a witness for the government, but the trial court allowed her to stay because of her status as a crime victim.

“Baskin was not directly and proximately harmed and therefore was not a crime victim. It is undisputed that Baskin suffered no physical harm from Maldonado-Passage’s alleged conduct,” Brandon Sample, the attorney for Maldonado-Passage, argued to the 10th Circuit.

The appellate panel disagreed, noting Baskin learned of the murder plot and enhanced her existing security measures to the point of avoiding going out in public.

“Because of his constant threats to kill me, I have found myself seeing every bystander as a potential threat,” Baskin said following Maldonado-Passage’s sentencing. “My daughter, my husband, my mother, my staff and volunteers have all been in peril because of his obsession with seeing me dead.”

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Oklahoma, Maldonado-Passage’s wildlife offenses included falsifying forms, killing five tigers to make room in cages and selling tiger cubs.

The case is United States v. Maldonado-Passage.