Teen Provides Alabama Gang Members With a ‘Teachable Moment’ About Violating State Gun Laws

In 2023, Alabama lawmakers adopted the Alabama Criminal Enterprise Act, which (among other things) provides for a mandatory five-year prison sentence for anyone convicted of possessing a gun as part of gang-related activities. 

Though the law has been on the books for more than two years, 19-year-old Tyrone Davis will be the first in the state to be sentenced under the law when he returns to court on January 22, 2026. 

Attorney General Steve Marshall says Davis was/is a member of a violent criminal gang called the “Cosby Court Cartel” that operates primarily in the Montgomery area. Davis was a juvenile when he was caught illegally possessing a firearm, but was denied youthful offender status and his case instead was heard in adult court. 

Davis ended up taking a plea deal to a single charge of “knowingly possessing a firearm during the commission of a criminal act intended to benefit a criminal enterprise,” and will have to serve every day of that five year sentence since the legislature has decreed that this offense isn’t eligible for a reduction in sentence based on good behavior behind bars. 

In a press release, Marshall declared, “armed gangs threaten the safety of every Alabama community, and minors who carry guns to support gang activity will now face real consequences.” 

Working with the Legislature, we secured mandatory prison time for anyone who uses a firearm to benefit a gang. The Alabama Criminal Enterprise Act is one of the strongest tools in the nation, and we will use it aggressively to protect Alabama families,” Attorney General Marshall said.

That’s good to hear. I do have a couple of questions though, starting with: if this law will be aggressively enforced and armed gangs threaten the safety of every Alabama community, why did it take more than two years for the law to be used against a criminal defendant? 

That’s not snark, just sheer curiousity. Maybe it’s as simple as not being able to use the law against defendants who were arrested and charged but not convicted before the law took effect. Perhaps there are some prosecutors who are unaware of the law or don’t want to use it because of their own soft-on-crime policies? Is it more difficult to prove beyond reasonable doubt someone was possessing a firearm during the commission of a criminal act intended to benefit a criminal enterprise than lawmakers intended?  

I’m not blaming Marshall in any way, but it’s just odd to me that it’s taken so long for this took to be used. 

Now that it is, though, gang members in Alabama will hopefully see Davis’s upcoming prison stint as a teachable moment. I doubt many of them will, but the opportunity is there. 

At the very least, it’s good to see some states are still willing to crack down on violent criminals themselves instead of targeting lawful gun owners with more restrictions on their Second Amendment rights. 

But this brings me to my second question. The actual crime is “possessing a firearm during the commission of a criminal act intended to benefit a criminal enterprise,” right? Presumably, then, this charge would only be filed in conjunction with other charges covering the “commission of the criminal act.” 

So, what other charges did Davis originally face, and how much time could he realistically have been sentenced to if convicted on those charges? 

I don’t want to see this law end up as plea bargain bait for violent offenders. A five-year mandatory sentence isn’t nothing, but if a defendant is facing the likelihood of spending 20 years or more behind bars if they’re convicted for their crimes then it sounds pretty good… at least from their perspective. From the public’s perspective though, that sound an awful lot like a slap on the wrist. 

Marshall’s press release doesn’t say what additional charges Davis faced, but it’s a question worth asking by some enterprising Alabama journalist. The Attorney General calls the Alabama Criminal Enterprise Act one of the strongest tools in the nation to cut down on violent crime, and it very well could be. I’m just concerned that it might also be deployed as a tool to allow prosecutors to swiftly resolve cases via a plea bargain that may or may not be in the best interests of justice or public safety. If that proves to the be the case, Alabama lawmakers should go back and revise this statute in two ways.

First, it cannot be prosecuted as a standalone offense, but must be prosecuted along with the criminal act where the firearm was possessed. Second, that the mandatory five-year sentence be served consecutively after the sentence for the underlying criminal act, not in concurrence with that sentence. Those changes would guarantee that the law couldn’t be used as plea bargain bait, and that the five-year sentence imposed by the Alabama Criminal Enterprise Act is a sentence enhancement, not a workaround for prosecutors to avoid going to trial.