A California judge who fatally shot his wife in August 2023 was sentenced on Wednesday to 35 years to life in prison after he contended at his sentencing hearing that the shooting was a “horrific accident.”
The judge, Jeffrey Ferguson, 74, was convicted of second-degree murder in April. Prosecutors said he intentionally shot Sheryl Ferguson, 65, his wife of 27 years, on Aug. 3, 2023, after a “drunken argument over money.”
Seton Hunt, an Orange County prosecutor, noted at the hearing on Wednesday that Mr. Ferguson had served as an Orange County Superior Court judge since 2015 and was a prosecutor in the Orange County District Attorney’s Office for more than 30 years.
“He was in a position, relative to almost any other person, to know the dangers of operating a gun in the manner that he did,” Mr. Hunt said. “He intentionally took that gun and he pointed it at his wife, and he pulled the trigger and killed her.”
Mr. Ferguson said, as he had in the past, that he did not mean to fire the gun.
“I understand the jury’s verdict, but it was a horrific accident,” he said. “I have enormous grief not for myself alone but for my son, Phillip, and Sheryl’s brothers. For me, Sheryl didn’t die just once, Aug. 3, 2023. She dies again and again every morning I wake up.”
He said his wife had “a great and generous heart.”
“I wish God had taken me instead,” he said.
Mr. Ferguson’s son, Phillip Ferguson, who was with his parents the night his mother was killed and called 9-1-1 to report the shooting, testified at the hearing that he and his mother had worried about Mr. Ferguson’s drinking but had never felt in danger. He said that his parents would argue but that they also loved each other and laughed together.
“I cannot draw any other conclusion than that my mother’s death had been accidental,” Phillip Ferguson said. “If I harbored any doubts of this in my mind, I could not stand to look my father in the eye, nor to hug him, nor to even call him my father.”
Prosecutors said that Mr. Ferguson had pulled a pistol from an ankle holster and shot Ms. Ferguson once in the chest at close range, as they watched television in the living room of their home in Anaheim Hills, a community southeast of Los Angeles.
Phillip Ferguson told the authorities after the shooting that Ms. Ferguson had told her husband, “Why don’t you point a real gun at me?” prosecutors said. Earlier that night, Mr. Ferguson had used his fingers to simulate pointing a gun at his wife during an argument at a Mexican restaurant, prosecutors said.
After the shooting, Phillip Ferguson performed CPR on his mother, following the instructions of emergency dispatchers, prosecutors said. When the police arrived, they found that Ms. Ferguson had been fatally shot and that her husband smelled of alcohol and was wearing an ankle holster, which was empty, court documents said.
The police later executed a search warrant at the home and recovered 48 weapons, including rifles, shotguns and handguns, and more than 26,000 rounds of ammunition, prosecutors said.
Mr. Ferguson was suspended without pay after his conviction in April. He has not been formally removed from the bench, although that is expected to happen now that he has been sentenced, according to Kimberly Edds, a spokeswoman for the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.
Judge Eleanor Hunter of Los Angeles County Superior Court, who oversaw the trial because Mr. Ferguson had served on the Orange County bench, said Mr. Ferguson knew that he should not handle a gun while drinking and angry.
But Mr. Ferguson “doesn’t pay attention to the rules,” Judge Hunter said, adding: “He doesn’t believe the rules apply to him.”
Michael Levenson covers breaking news for The Times from New York.
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