Mistrial declared in murder case of O.C. judge who shot wife

An Orange County jury deadlocked Monday on a charge of second-degree murder against a 74-year-old Superior Court judge who shot and killed his wife after hours of bickering and hard drinking.

After eight days of deliberations, the jury was split 11 to 1 in favor of convicting Jeffrey Ferguson, who said he fumbled and fired accidentally while trying to place his gun on a coffee table when he killed his wife of 27 years.

Ferguson and his 65-year-old wife, Sheryl, had been quarreling about money 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.

During his testimony, he 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.

In the hours after the shooting, seized by guilt and self-loathing, an inebriated Ferguson wished aloud for the death penalty, demanded to be punched in the face and predicted that he would burn in hell. He agonized over their 22-year-old son, who had just witnessed his mother’s violent death, and vowed not to cheat the law with “subterfuge.”

“Convict my ass,” Ferguson muttered to an imaginary jury in a police interview room.

Facing a real jury in a Santa Ana courtroom 18 months later, threatened with prison and the end of his pension as a judge, a sober Ferguson cast his wife’s death as an accident and denied criminal blame.

“We loved each other a lot,” Ferguson testified. “We didn’t argue all the time.”

Ferguson and his wife had been having a familiar fight that day. He told jurors that she was upset because they had sent money to his grown son from a previous marriage, but had received no thank you card.

“What annoyed her is he never expressed gratitude or appreciation,” Ferguson testified. “Ten days had gone by and no card had arrived.”

The argument continued over dinner at El Cholo restaurant, where he pointed his finger at her in imitation of a gun, making her so upset she left the table.

Ferguson told jurors his gesture had not been one of menace but of capitulation, a way of saying, “You win.”

Back at home, the quarrel continued. 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.

But Ferguson told jurors that is not what he heard his wife say. Instead, he said he heard: “Why don’t you put the real gun away from me?”

Ferguson said he responded by unsnapping his ankle holster, removing his Glock, and attempting to put it on the coffee table, because “I just wanted to please her.” He said he was missing tendons in his right arm.

“My arm failed,” he said. “I got a shooting pain. … I was trying to clutch it so it wouldn’t drop, and it fired. … She had a very surprised look on her face.”

His son tackled him and wrested the gun away.

“I was kind of in shell shock,” Ferguson said.

Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Seton Hunt presents his closing arguments in the judge’s trial.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Under cross-examination from Deputy Dist. Atty. Seton Hunt, Ferguson acknowledged that he had broken the law hundreds of times by drinking in public while armed, which is forbidden by the terms of his concealed-carry permit.

Before his arrest, Ferguson presided over a courtroom at the Fullerton courthouse. He testified that it was common for him to drink at lunch.

“I always went to lunch with judges,” Ferguson said.

“You have a lot of powerful friends, I understand that, sir,” Hunt said.

The prosecutor asked him why he didn’t just leave the room and remove the gun elsewhere.

“I could have,” Ferguson said. “I should have.”

At one point during Ferguson’s testimony, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Eleanor Hunter, who is presiding over the trial because Orange County judges recused themselves, castigated Ferguson for interrupting people and not answering questions directly.

“While you might want to control everything, you’re not gonna control it here,” Hunter said.

Ferguson, who was a prosecutor for 32 years before becoming a judge in 2015, testified that he wanted to save his pension for his son, Phillip, who had just graduated college. “That’s where the money would go,” he said. “He has no trajectory yet, and I’m worried about him.”

Later, he added: “I don’t have much to be around for except my son.”

In his closing argument, Hunt, the prosecutor, described Ferguson’s account of the shooting as “nonsense” and “absurd.” He said it made no sense that Sheryl Ferguson would ask her husband to put the gun away when it had already been concealed from sight.

“He lost his temper. He shot his wife. It’s that simple,” Hunt said. He reminded jurors that one of the gun-safety rules Ferguson had taught his son was: “Never point a firearm at something you do not intend to destroy.”

He argued that Ferguson was a firearms expert and had renewed his concealed-carry permit 18 times, but that it had not stopped him from violating its terms by drinking.

“He doesn’t think that the rules apply to him,” Hunt said. “He’s a judge. He doesn’t care.”

Some of the people who worked with Ferguson — including his bailiff and his clerk — took the witness stand to say he was a “peaceful” person. Defense attorney Cameron Talley said Ferguson had never before been charged with a crime, and had no history of domestic violence.

“He wasn’t angry and had never been angry that night,” Talley said.

Ferguson is free on $2 million bail. After Judge Hunter declared a mistrial Monday, Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer said he would retry the case.

One of the details to emerge at trial was the fate of the chair in which Sheryl Ferguson was sitting when she was shot. Ferguson said it remained in his family room.

“It was her chair,” Ferguson testified. “I didn’t want to part with it.”