Joe Exotic Granted More Time in Civil Case Because He's in Isolation

Joe Exotic is in a desperate situation ... he's isolated in the bowels of a federal prison, unable to fight the government in his $89 million wrongful imprisonment lawsuit, and he's begging the judge for access to a computer and the law library.

The "Tiger King" star just filed a handwritten legal doc, telling the judge he's running out of time to respond to the government's legal docs in the civil lawsuit. Joe says he can't respond without the proper tools, so he wants another 30 days.

Joe says he's been isolated at the Federal Medical Center ... he can't phone anyone, email them ... he has no access to the outside world.

This syncs up with our TMZ Investigation, which aired on Fox last Monday. We were told he was in isolation because inmates from the previous facility where Joe was housed tested positive for the virus. The prison disputes it, but for some reason, he's still in quarantine. His people say Joe is virus-free.

Joe is also appealing his conviction. He has some interesting arguments ... among them, "did the prosecutor throw in animal abuse charges in the murder-for-hire trial just to unfairly prejudice the jury so he'd get convicted?" And, if you saw the special, it's interesting that "hitman" and star prosecution witness Allen Glover revealed a bias by saying he delivered payback to Joe and wished he could have done more to hurt him.