A federal judge has reduced Tiger King's Joe Exotic's prison sentence from 22 years to 21 years, a year less than the original order. This, after he made a request for leniency in order to get better cancer treatment. While a reduction is favorable, one year might not make that much of a difference.

One whole year has been cut from Joe Exotic's sentence. One of the said conspirators to assassinate Carole Baskin, his arch-enemy, Exotic received a new 21-year sentence from a federal judge on Friday (Jan. 28).

As he prepares to begin treatment for prostate cancer, Joseph Maldonado-Passage, Joe's full legal name, was reportedly asking the judge for more leniency at Friday's court hearing.

"Please don't make me die in prison waiting for a chance to be free," he reportedly told the judge in court.

While some can be sympathetic towards the "Tiger King" star, this does not mean his crime can just be forgotten. In fact, Carole and her husband Howard were at the hearing, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Joe was apprehended on September 7, 2018. Because Carole had been critical of Joe's animal park and cat-keeping practices, and because she had won a million-dollar trademark infringement suit against him in 2011, the two had a strained relationship.

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Their long-running feud finally came to a head in 2017 when Joe tried to hire a man named Allen Glover to kill Carole for $3,000, reports the New York Daily News. After being accused of killing endangered tigers to make room for other exotic animals, Joe was also arrested.

On two counts of hiring an assassin to kill Carole Baskin in Florida, eight counts of violating the Lacey Act by falsifying wildlife records, and nine counts of violating the Endangered Species Act by killing five tigers and reselling them across state lines, a federal jury found Joe guilty of all charges in January 2020. As of July 2021, he had been sentenced to between 17.5 and 22 years in prison for the crime he was originally convicted of in January 2020.

In November of 2021, Joe revealed to the world that he had been diagnosed with cancer and requested his release from prison so that he could receive proper medical treatment. "There is no reason for the district attorney to drag this out, So I can go home and get treatment on my own or enjoy what life I have left with my loved ones! Say a prayer everyone & be my voice," he posted on Nov. 3.