An Orange County Superior Court judge took the stand Monday, testifying to jurors in his ongoing murder trial that he accidentally shot and killed his wife at their Anaheim Hills home after his injured shoulder gave out and he fumbled the firearm.
Judge Jeffrey Ferguson’s testimony came hours after his attorney acknowledged to jurors that the judge is an alcoholic who was arguing with his wife, Sheryl Ferguson, before pulling the gun that killed her out of his ankle holster. But the defense attorney claimed that the Aug. 3, 2023 killing was not intentional.
“Mr. Ferguson, who was 72-year-old (at the time), shot and killed his wife with a Glock Model 27 .40 caliber,” Attorney Cameron Talley said, referring to a concealed carry pistol that the judge constantly carried in an ankle holster. “The evidence is also going to show, without question, that it was an accident that resulted from an accidental discharge of his firearm.”
Ferguson, after taking the stand on Monday afternoon, admitted that he repeatedly violated the terms of his concealed carry permit by drinking while carrying a concealed weapon, but denied intentionally killing his wife.
“Were you angry at Sheryl that day? Talley asked.
“No,” Ferguson replied.
“Did you have any intention of killing Sheryl that day?”
“No”
“Did you shoot her on purpose, or was it an accident?”
“It was an accident.”
Senior Deputy District Attorney Seton Hunt, during the prosecution’s opening statement last week, told jurors that a heated argument between the judge and his wife ended with the wife — angered at her husband pointing a finger at her to mimic a firearm — allegedly telling the judge something to the effect of “Why don’t you use a real gun?” and the judge immediately responding by taking his pistol from the ankle holster and shooting his wife.
Ferguson, who had been a prosecutor and a judge for more than three decades, testified to having a concealed carry permit since 1985, when he was a young prosecutor. According to testimony in the trial, Ferguson only removed the gun and the holster when he was sleeping or taking a shower.
Jeffrey and Sheryl Ferguson had been married for 27 years. Talley, the defense attorney, told jurors that the couple had no history of domestic violence, but did argue and fight. The main sources of tension in their relationship were Judge Ferguson’s daily drinking, his attorney said, and money they had given to an older son from the judge’s previous marriage that Sheryl didn’t feel the son was appreciative enough of.
“Never physical, but sometimes they would have shouting matches and raise their voices,” Talley said of the couple’s arguments.
The day of the shooting, an argument over finances began at the family home, continued when the couple went out to eat with their then-22-year-old son, who was at home from college over the summer, and culminated when the couple and their son came home and watched some of the final episodes of the television show “Breaking Bad” together.
Judge Ferguson acknowledged that while at dinner he made a “finger gun” motion at his wife in the midst of their argument.
“What did you mean by that?” The defense attorney asked.
“‘You win,’” Ferguson responded. “I didn’t want to continue the argument. I was sort of done.”
Other people at the restaurant saw the “finger gun” motion, the defense attorney said, leaving Sheryl Ferguson embarrassed and angry.
The judge was drinking before the couple and their son left for dinner, at the restaurant and when they returned home, his attorney acknowledged. But the judge said was trying to make amends to his wife while they were watching television.
While the couple’s son, Phillip, testified to hearing his mother say something like “Why don’t you use a real gun,” Judge Ferguson said he instead heard her say something like “Why don’t you put the real gun away for me?” She also made her own “finger-gun” motion and made “pshew, pshew” sounds, Ferguson added, apparently mimicking gunshots.
Judge Ferguson — who was around 280 pounds at the time — struggled to get up and reach toward a coffee table, where books blocked him from placing the weapon straight forward, his attorney told jurors. Judge Ferguson turned the gun to the side to fit it on the table, he testified, when his shoulder — which had three out of four tendons gone — gave out, and his finger slid from the side of the gun onto the trigger, causing the pistol to fire.
“My arm failed, I got a shooting pain and my arm dropped,” Ferguson said. “I reflexively grabbed it. I didn’t want to drop it on the floor. It fired. When I grabbed it my finger came off the trigger guard and must have hit the trigger.”
“I immediately looked over to Sheryl,” Ferguson added. “And she had a very surprised look on her face. She actually stood up out of the chair, did kind of a turn or pivot to the right and fell over. Then I knew she had been hit.”
On the night of the shooting, the couple’s son told detectives that he saw his father pull the gun from the holster, aim and fire the weapon. But, during his testimony last week, the son changed his story slightly, telling jurors that he didn’t actually see his father pull out the weapon and aim — instead claiming he turned around right before the gun went off — and for the first time describing up to 30 seconds going by between the mother commenting about the gun and the gun firing.
Not wanting to delay paramedics getting to his wife by forcing officers to search for a shooter, Judge Ferguson said he walked out of the home to the front yard, while his son frantically performed CPR on his mother.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Ferguson texted to the clerk and bailiff assigned to the courtroom he presided in at the time at the Fullerton courthouse “I just lost it. I just shot my wife. I won’t be in tomorrow. I will be in custody. I’m so sorry.” He also told the arriving officers “I did it” and “shoot me,” and while in custody at the Anaheim Police Station made a series of seemingly incriminating comments, including saying to himself “I killed her. Ladies and Gentleman of the jury, convict my ass. I did it.”
Ferguson described himself as “shell-shocked” after the shooting, and admitted he still felt drunk. Ferguson’s text to his court staff was an attempt to “grasp some mundane thing to get a grip on reality,” Ferguson said, and meant to convey he wouldn’t be back the next day, not that he would never return. And the reference to jurors was simply the judge talking in the legal parlance he was used to, his attorney said, not him addressing an actual future jury that would decide his fate.
“I was overwhelmed with emotional guilt, worried about my son,” Ferguson said. “I felt terrible, bewildered and was still trying to process what happened. I felt like ‘lock me up and throw away the key.’”
At one point, the defense attorney noted, Ferguson told a detective that “I didn’t mean to kill her.” But Ferguson was also told the investigator that he wished the state “still had the death penalty.”
“Why did you say that?” Talley asked.
“Because I wanted to die,” Ferguson replied.
“Did you say that because you were guilty of murder?”
“No.”
At the end of his opening statement, Talley told the jurors that he is asking them to find Judge Ferguson not guilty of any criminal charge.
The prosecution earlier in the day told the judge, outside the presences of the jury, that at this point in the trial they expect to argue for a second-degree murder conviction.
A Los Angeles County judge is presiding over the trial in a Santa Ana courtroom in order to avoid a conflict of interest with Ferguson’s Orange County judicial colleagues.
The same judge, Eleanor J. Hunter, ruled last year that Ferguson had lied on the stand while testifying in a bail review hearing. Ferguson testified during that earlier hearing that his use of cortisone cream and hand sanitizer had caused a false-positive reading on his ankle monitor. But Judge Hunter described that argument as “ridiculous” and doubled Ferguson’s bail to $2 million.
Whether the prosecution will be able to use Judge Hunter’s description of Ferguson lying on the stand in that earlier hearing while questioning Ferguson during his testimony in the murder trial has yet to be determined.
Hunt, the prosecutor, briefly cross-examined Ferguson late Wednesday, asking him about the many guns in his collection and questioning Ferguson’s claim that he was unable to hold a gun one-handed in a firing position. The prosecutor is scheduled to continue his questioning of Ferguson on Tuesday morning.