{"id":720294,"date":"2026-06-07T03:52:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T03:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/720294\/"},"modified":"2026-06-07T03:52:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T03:52:11","slug":"tiger-king-star-doc-antle-cleared-in-lion-cub-case-convictions-vacated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/720294\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Tiger King’ Star Doc Antle Cleared in Lion Cub Case, Convictions Vacated"},"content":{"rendered":"

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“Tiger King” star Doc Antle is celebrating a huge legal win … after Virginia’s Supreme Court threw out all of his remaining convictions stemming from his lion cub purchases.<\/p>\n

Antle had been convicted on charges tied to buying lion cubs from a Virginia zoo owner in 2018 and 2019. But Virginia’s highest court ruled the law prosecutors used never actually made it illegal to purchase the animals.<\/p>\n

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The justices found the statute banned the sale of endangered species — not the purchase of them — and tossed Antle’s convictions and the indictments behind them.<\/p>\n

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The court also threw out Antle’s conspiracy convictions, ruling the charges were based in part on conduct that wasn’t actually a crime.<\/p>\n

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Antle called the decision “total vindication” in a press release … saying, “Today the highest court in Virginia confirmed what I have said since the day these charges were filed: I broke no law. Not one.”<\/p>\n


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Of course, this isn’t the end of Antle’s legal saga. TMZ previously reported the Myrtle Beach Safari owner was sentenced <\/a>to 12 months in federal prison last July after admitting to wildlife trafficking and money laundering conspiracy charges involving cheetahs, lions, tigers and a chimpanzee.<\/p>\n

But when it comes to the Virginia lion cub case … Doc just clawed back a huge win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“Tiger King” star Doc Antle is celebrating a huge legal win … after Virginia’s Supreme Court threw out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":720295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":["post-720294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=720294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/720295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}