A veteran Orange County judge who killed his wife in their Anaheim Hills home during an argument two years ago was convicted of second-degree murder Tuesday.
Jeffrey Ferguson, now 74, had been drinking hard on Aug. 3, 2023, when he reached for the Glock .40-caliber handgun he routinely kept in an ankle holster. He pumped a single bullet through the midsection of his wife, 65-year-old Sheryl Ferguson, who sat a few feet away. They had been in the family room with their son watching “Breaking Bad” and bickering about money.
Shortly after the incident, Ferguson texted his courtroom staff to say, “I just lost it.” In a police interview room, a camera captured him saying, “My pension’s gone,” and “I killed her. … Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, convict my ass — I did it.”
At trial, however, Ferguson and his attorneys maintained the shooting was an accident. He said he had been trying to put his gun on the coffee table when his shoulder gave out, causing him to fumble the gun and inadvertently pull the trigger, fatally wounding his wife of 27 years.
“I was not mad,” he testified.
Ferguson, who presided over a courtroom in Fullerton before his arrest, had been free on $2-million bail and drawing his annual salary of more than $220,000 during his legal proceedings but not hearing cases. He was taken into custody after the verdict.
Ferguson’s first trial in his wife’s shooting ended in deadlock last month, with the jury split 11 to 1 in favor of conviction after eight days of deliberations. The jury at the second trial took just a day to reach a guilty verdict.
In his closing arguments in the second trial Monday, Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Seton Hunt told jurors that this was not a complicated case.
“Husband and wife do not get along,” he said. “They have shouting matches. They get worse when the husband drinks.”
During testimony, Ferguson admitted that he was an alcoholic and that he’d been drinking that day. A prosecution expert said Ferguson’s blood alcohol level had been about twice the legal driving limit at the time of the shooting.
As evidence of the intensity of the argument that night, the prosecutor pointed to a remark from the couple’s 22-year-old son, Phillip, who was home from college that summer and witnessed the shooting. Phillip said he reached for a replica historical sword as his parents’ quarreling grew more heated, because he was worried.
The son told police that his father pantomimed pointing a gun at his mother with his hand, and that his mother said, “Why don’t you just point a real gun at me?” At that point, the son said, he saw his father aim the Glock at her and shoot.
“I tackled him,” Phillip told police. “I made sure he let go of the gun before I let him get up.”
Defense attorney Cameron Talley told jurors that the location of the gun’s spent cartridge, which was found at the base of the couch where his client had been sitting, was more consistent with Ferguson’s story than with a deliberate shooting. “Yes, he killed her,” he said. “Doesn’t mean it was on purpose.”
Talley underscored inconsistencies in the son’s account, including Phillip wavering on his claim that he saw his father fire the gun, and at one point saying he grabbed his replica sword only after the shooting.
“Much of what Phillip says is a nonissue,” Talley said. “He’s all over the place.”
Hunt, the prosecutor, said the son “clearly … wasn’t being completely forthcoming” in his testimony. He attributed the vacillating accounts to Phillip’s plight as a witness who “saw his mother murdered before his very eyes” but still loved the killer.
“The fact that Phillip forgives [and] loves his father … that’s not a defense,” Hunt said.
Both trials made clear that the argument was about money — in specific, Ferguson’s insistence on sending money to a grown son, Kevin, from a prior marriage, over his wife’s objections.
This time, however, testimony suggested a thornier layer to the quarrel: Phillip said the family had learned a few years earlier that the older brother was not Ferguson’s biological child. He said his mother resented his brother.
Talley described his client as a man who kept his commitments. “He kept supporting Kevin when it came out he wasn’t his biological son.”
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Eleanor Hunter, who presided over the case after Orange County judges recused themselves, set a sentencing date of June 13.
Ferguson’s conviction includes a firearms enhancement, and he faces 40 years to life in prison. The state Commission on Judicial Performance must formally review his case before he is officially removed from the bench.
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