The fate of a judge from the Orange County Court who killed and killed his wife during an argument at their home in Anaheim Hills is once again in the hands of a jury, a little more than a month after the end of his first trial for murder with a previous panel of the dead end of the jurors.
The jurors of the new trial of Jeffrey Ferguson began their deliberations on Monday afternoon after a week-long trial in front of a superior courtyard in a courtroom in Santa Ana. Like the previous panel, the current jurors are responsible for deciding if Ferguson committed a second degree murder, a lower accusation of manslaughter or if it must be acquitted of all criminal charges.
The accusation alleys that an inbound Ferguson was angry with his wife, Sheryl, making fun of him and released a Glock caliber pistol.
Ferguson, during the testimony of both in the original trial and the new trial, described the trial and trial to grop the weapon after his shoulder gave in while he was trying to remove the firearm from his ankle case and place it on a table and inadvertently shoot the fatal rifle. An accidental shooting would mean that no crime was committed, defense has argued.
The previous jury deliberated over nine days – longer than the first trial itself – before the 11 to 1 deadlines in favor of the second degree murder. The Hold Out juror apparently supported a condemnation for manslaughter.
The judge of the Superior Court of Los Angeles, Eleanor J. Hunter – who chairs the case to avoid a conflict of interest between the judicial colleagues of Ferguson on the bench of the County of Orange – pushed a rapid turnaround to a new trial after the initial trial.
The closing arguments presented to the jurors were largely the same in the two trials.
The assistant prosecutor of the senior Seton Hunt district once again described two ways to reach a condemnation for second degree murder – determining that Ferguson intentionally pulled the deadly shot, or instead by handling a loaded pistol while Ferguson drunk acts with unpredictable contempt for the security of his wife.
“Surprisingly, he sort of caught the weapon and it happened,” the prosecutor told jurors. “He (the shot) struck the victim due to the center mass, the person with whom he argued.”
Defense lawyer Cameron Talley was more complicated by the case, criticizing the prosecutor for not having chosen to argue only if they thought that Ferguson had intentionally killed his wife or if he had simply acted so negligent that he was responsible for his death.
“If it’s so simple, why can’t the government decide what theory is it?” Asked Talley. “Instead, there is this Smorgasbord approach.”
For more than an hour after the shooting, Ferguson made a long series of apparently incriminating statements that were captured on cameras carried by officers and inside the Anaheim police station.
Sometimes Ferguson cried for his wife and son and castigated with self -disgust. At other times, he boasted of his achievements during a long career as a prosecutor and judge.
At one point – in the comments shown to the jurors during the two trials – Ferguson said to himself: “I killed her. Ladies and gentleman of the jury, condemned my ass. I did it. “
Ferguson drew the anger of judge Hunter by embarking on what she described as a “press tour” which included several interviews between the trial and the new trial. During an appearance in Inside Edition, Ferguson declared that he and his wife “bicked just like Lucy and Desi” before the judge said that he had pulled him and accidentally killed.
The jurors deliberated for about an hour and a half on Monday before leaving for the day. They should come back to resume the deliberations on Tuesday morning.
California Daily Newspapers
