Days after the jury selected to decide his fate was unable to reach a verdict, and ahead of a potential retrial, Orange County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Ferguson pleaded his case to television viewers — maintaining that the fatal shooting of his wife was nothing more than a tragic mishap.
The 74-year-old Ferguson, who is free on $2-million bail after a jury deadlocked Monday 11 to 1 in favor of convicting him on a charge of second-degree murder, told NBC4 he was “relieved that there was a mistrial” but sobered by how close he had come to incarceration.
“I was disappointed in the count, the 11-1, that was sort of a blow to my emotions,” he said. “But I don’t have any other choice but to keep going forward.”
Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer has said he would retry the case.
The jury deliberated for eight days over whether to convict Ferguson in the shooting death of his 65-year-old wife, Sheryl.
Ferguson and his wife had been quarreling about money and gratitude for hours when he removed his Glock from his ankle holster and fired a single bullet through her midsection on Aug. 3, 2023. They were between watching episodes of “Breaking Bad” in the family room of their Anaheim Hills home.
Their son, Phillip, told police he heard his mother say, “Why don’t you point a real gun at me?” before his father extended his arm and fired. Ferguson, however, told jurors that he instead heard his wife say, “Why don’t you put the real gun away from me?”
According to court testimony, Ferguson said he unsnapped his ankle holster, pulled out his weapon and tried to place it on the coffee table. Instead, he said he lost control of the gun.
Ferguson told NBC4 that his “shoulder failed” and, in response, he “clutched the gun and fired it.”
“It was an accidental discharge,” he said while shaking his head. “It was an accident; I didn’t even know what was happening when it happened.”
During trial, he admitted that he was an alcoholic and that he’d been drinking that day. A prosecution expert testified that Ferguson’s blood alcohol level had been about twice the legal driving limit at the time of the shooting.
“I’m going to be in a cell up here in my head for the rest of my life,” Ferguson told NBC4. “I live with this every day. It haunts me every day.”
In another interview with Inside Edition, Ferguson said that at the time of the arrest, he was just trying to process what was happening.
“These thoughts are tumbling out of you,” he said. “You’re trying to comprehend it yourself.”
Being a defendant in a court he served for roughly 40 years was “bewildering,” he said, and akin to being in an episode of “The Twilight Zone.”
“It’s like you’re snatched out of your reality and you are plunked down without any real warning into a completely different world and a world that is not especially friendly to you,” he told NBC4.
Times staff writer Christopher Goffard contributed to this report.
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