A federal judge in Mobile handed down a 25-year prison sentence Monday to Marco Perez, the man accused of fatally shooting Mobile Police Officer Sean Tuder in 2019, after Perez was convicted on federal gun charges connected to the case. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Beaverstock imposed the sentence following an emotional hearing that included testimony from Tuder’s mother, a cousin and a fellow officer, all of whom asked the court to impose the maximum penalty allowed by law.
Perez was convicted of possession of a stolen firearm and receiving a firearm while under indictment, charges that stem from the same 2019 incident in which Tuder was killed while trying to serve an outstanding warrant. The federal case did not charge the killing itself, but it put before a federal judge the firearm conduct at the center of the episode that ended Tuder’s life, and it produced a prison term that will run concurrently with nothing — the judge ordered it served on top of whatever the state case produces.
How the encounter unfolded
According to court records, Tuder was off duty at his Mobile home when he received a call from a confidential informant on Jan. 21, 2019, indicating that Perez, who was wanted on outstanding gun-related warrants, had been located at Peach Place Apartments. Tuder, then 30, was in plainclothes and driving his personal vehicle when he went to the scene. He had coordinated with a supervisor and requested backup before the encounter turned deadly.
The details matter to the case’s legacy within the department. Tuder was not on shift, yet he followed protocol — calling a supervisor, arranging for backing officers — before moving on the tip. Warrant service is among the most dangerous routine work in law enforcement, and the fact that an officer with years ahead of him died executing a step officers perform daily gave the sentencing hearing much of its weight.
A stacked federal term
The federal sentence breaks down to 60 months on the stolen-firearm count and 120 months on the charge of receiving a firearm while under indictment, with an additional 120 months added under federal sentencing enhancement guidelines. The enhancements and consecutive counts pushed the total to the 25-year term Beaverstock imposed, near the ceiling of what the counts and the guidelines permitted.
Perez still faces a separate state capital murder trial in connection with Tuder’s death. Beaverstock ordered that the 25-year federal sentence run consecutively with any sentence handed down in that case, meaning Perez would serve the full federal term in addition to any punishment imposed if he is convicted at trial. The structure ensures that even the most favorable outcome for the defense in state court would leave the federal term intact, while the capital charge preserves the possibility of a harsher ultimate penalty.
A family speaks
Noreen Tuder, the officer’s mother, traveled from Jacksonville, Florida, to address the court. She described her son as someone who had dreamed since childhood of becoming a police officer and serving in the military, and said he found purpose in helping others. She asked Beaverstock to impose the harshest sentence available, telling the judge that while she hoped to one day find forgiveness, she would never forget what happened to her son.
Sean Tuder’s cousin, Anna Marron, also spoke at the hearing, describing him as part of a close-knit group of 13 cousins who called themselves “the wolfpack.” She remembered his humor and generosity and asked the court to apply the maximum sentence, saying her cousin would still be alive were it not for Perez’s actions.
Mobile Police Department Sgt. Patrick McKean, a 26-year veteran of the department who considered Tuder a friend and colleague, told the court that Tuder’s decision to serve in the military and in law enforcement reflected his commitment to his country, city and county. McKean urged Beaverstock to impose the strictest possible sentence, saying the loss continues to affect Tuder’s family and the entire police department.
Victim impact testimony occupies a particular place in federal sentencing. The guidelines constrain what the numbers can be, but the hearing is where a courtroom full of people gets to explain what the loss of a life actually costs, and the three speakers — mother, cousin, colleague — represented the three circles Tuder’s death had broken: family, extended family and the department itself.
The sentencing argument
Perez’s attorney, John Beck, argued for a lighter sentence of 10 to 15 years, contending that the two federal counts involved the same firearm and uninterrupted possession, and that stacking the sentences consecutively would be an error. The defense position treated the episode as a single course of conduct that the government had charged twice, and asked the judge to reflect that in a term proportioned to the federal counts alone.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle O’Brien countered by pointing to an alleged assault Perez was accused of committing while held at Mobile County Metro Jail, arguing that his conduct behind bars supported consecutive sentences. Beaverstock ultimately sided with prosecutors, adopting the government’s view that the conduct justified the full stacked term rather than the single-course-of-act reduction the defense sought.
Before issuing the sentence, Beaverstock told Perez he hoped he would find a way to move forward and make better choices, noting that he had observed several points during the case where Perez could have changed course but did not. The judge recommended Perez be placed in a federal facility equipped with mental health care resources and encouraged him to take advantage of programs designed to help him going forward.
Those recommendations — mental health care, education and rehabilitation programs — do not shorten a 25-year term, but they shape where within the federal prison system the Bureau of Prisons designates an inmate and what that inmate can accomplish there. In a sentence this long, the difference between a facility with treatment resources and one without is the difference between years of stagnation and years of programming.
The case’s weight on the department
Tuder’s death in January 2019 marked the second line-of-duty loss for the Mobile Police Department in less than a year, a toll that drew widespread grief across the Mobile area at the time and has continued to reverberate through the department and Tuder’s family as the case has moved through the courts.
Two officer deaths inside twelve months is a burden few departments of Mobile’s size experience, and it changed the texture of daily policing in the city: the funeral processions, the memorial details, the roll-call moments of silence, and the practical questions of how officers approach warrant service and backup coordination that follow every line-of-duty death. The department has carried the case through state and federal courtrooms in parallel, with officers attending hearings in both.
For the family, the federal sentencing closed one chapter but not the case. The state capital murder trial remains ahead, and with it another round of testimony, another jury, and another reckoning with the January 2019 morning at Peach Place Apartments. The consecutive structure Beaverstock imposed guarantees that whatever the state court decides, the federal judgment will stand as its own, complete accounting.
Federal prosecutors pursue firearm cases arising from police shootings for a practical reason as well: the federal system moves on its own calendar, its firearm statutes carry substantial mandatory terms, and a conviction there ensures a long prison term even while the more serious state charge works its way toward trial. In Perez’s case, that strategy produced a 25-year federal sentence roughly three years after the offense, with the state case still to come.
The sentence also illustrates how federal firearm law operates alongside state murder charges when the two systems pursue the same defendant. The counts Perez faced — possession of a stolen firearm and receipt of a firearm while under indictment — are straightforward possession offenses on their face, but federal prosecutors routinely bring them in cases connected to violence against officers because they can be proven to a jury without resolving who fired first, and they carry guideline enhancements for conduct surrounding the offense.
The stolen-firearm count penalizes possession of a gun that was taken from its lawful owner, a frequent feature of cases involving weapons recovered after crimes in urban areas; the under-indictment count applies because Perez was legally barred from possessing any firearm at all while facing pending charges. Together, the counts convert the same weapon at the center of the state case into two separate federal offenses, each with its own term, and the enhancement framework lets the judge stack them.
What remains for the courts is the state trial, where the capital murder charge will require the prosecution to prove the killing itself. Mobile County juries have handled the courthouse security and logistics that capital cases demand, and the proceedings are expected to draw continued public attention given how deeply Tuder’s death was felt across the city.
In the meantime, the federal record now stands: a judge’s finding that the firearm conduct warranted a quarter-century, testimony that preserved for the file what Tuder’s mother, cousin and colleague wanted the court to know about him, and a sentence structure designed so that the federal term survives regardless of what the state case ultimately produces.