A veteran judge of the County of Orange who killed his wife in their home in Anaheim Hills during an argument two years ago was found guilty of second degree murder on Tuesday.
Jeffrey Ferguson, now aged 74, had drank hard on August 3, 2023, when he reached the Glock .40 caliber handgun he regularly kept in an ankle case. He pumped a single ball through the median section of his wife, Sheryl Ferguson, 65, who sat down a few meters away. They had been in the family room with their son looking at “Breaking Bad” and bickering on money.
Shortly after the incident, Ferguson sent a text to his courtroom to say: “I just lost it.” In a police -interview room, a camera captured him saying: “My pension is gone” and “I killed her. … ladies and gentlemen of the jury, condemned my ass – I did it. “
At the trial, however, Ferguson and his lawyers maintained that the shooting was an accident. He said he had tried to put his pistol on the coffee table when his shoulder had given it, making him grop the pistol and inadvertently press the relaxation, fatally injuring his 27 -year -old wife.
“I was not crazy,” he said.
Ferguson, who chaired a courtroom in Fullerton before his arrest, had been free from a deposit of $ 2 million and achieved his annual salary of more than $ 220,000 during his legal proceedings, but not business. He was placed in police custody after the verdict.
Ferguson’s first trial in his wife’s shooting ended in a dead end last month, the jury divided 11 to 1 in favor of conviction after eight days of deliberations. The jury during the second trial only took one day to make a guilt verdict.
In his closing arguments during the second trial on Monday, the deputy for the county of Orange Dist. Atty. Seton Hunt told jurors that this was not a complicated case.
“The husband and the wife do not get along,” he said. “They have shouted matches. They worse when the husband drinks. “
During the testimony, Ferguson admitted that he was an alcoholic and that he had drunk that day. An expert in charge said that Ferguson’s alcohol level was approximately double the legal driving limit at the time of the shooting.
As proof of the intensity of the argument that evening, the prosecutor underlined a remark by the 22-year-old son of the couple, Phillip, who was at the university’s house that summer and witnessed the shooting. Phillip said he had sought a replica of historic sword when his parents’ quarrel had become more heated because he was worried.
The son told the police that his father pantomimed a weapon on his mother with his hand, and that his mother said: “Why don’t you look at a real weapon?” At that time, said the son, he saw his father target the Glock on her and shoot.
“I tackled it,” Phillip told the police. “I made sure that he let go of the weapon before letting him get up.”
Defense lawyer Cameron Talley told jurors that the location of the used pistol cartridge, which had been found at the base of the sofa where his client was seated, was more coherent with Ferguson’s history than with a deliberate shooting. “Yes, he killed her,” he said. “It doesn’t mean it was on purpose.”
Talley underlined the inconsistencies in the story of the son, notably Phillip vacillating on his assertion that he saw his father shoot the pistol, and at some point that he had caught his replica of sword only after the shooting.
“Much of what Phillip says is a non-professional,” said Talley. “It is everywhere.”
Hunt, the prosecutor, said that the son “clearly … was not completely to appear” in his testimony. He attributed the flickering accounts to the spell of Phillip as a witness who “saw his mother murdered before his eyes” but has always loved the killer.
“The fact that Phillip forgives (and) loves his father … It is not a defense,” said Hunt.
The two trials clearly indicated that the argument concerned money – in particular, Ferguson’s insistence on sending money to an adult son, Kevin, of a previous marriage, on his wife’s objections.
This time, however, the testimony suggested a more thorny layer in the quarrel: Phillip said that the family had learned a few years earlier that the older brother was not the biological child of Ferguson. He said his mother wanted his brother.
Talley described his client as a man who has kept his commitments. “He continued to support Kevin when he came out that he was not his biological son.”
The judge of the Superior Court of the County of Los Angeles, Eleanor Hunter, who presided over the case after the judges of the County Orange had challenged, set a date of June 13.
Ferguson’s conviction includes an improvement in firearms and risks 40 years for life imprisonment. Under the Constitution of the State, a judge found guilty of a crime is automatically suspended and deleted when the conviction is final.
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