As an Orange County judge, who a short time earlier had admitted to fatally shooting his wife during a heated argument at their Anaheim Hills home, was being processed into police custody, his thoughts apparently took a turn toward how he might address the jury at his own future trial.
“I killed her,” Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Ferguson said, apparently to himself, in a comment captured on video during his August 2023 arrest, “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, convict my ass. I did it.”
RELATED: California judge, accused of killing wife, is in jail and drawing $220,000 salary
About a year and a half after the killing, the Orange County Superior Court jurors who will decide Ferguson’s fate watched as a prosecutor, during opening statements Wednesday in a Santa Ana courtroom, played the video of the judge making those comments at the outset of his murder trial.
The judge shot and killed 65-year-old Sheryl Ferguson with the .40 caliber Glock he constantly carried in an ankle holster immediately after the wife — angry at her husband pointing his finger at her to mimic a firearm — told him “Why don’t you use a real gun?”, Senior Deputy District Attorney Seton Hunt told jurors.
With Ferguson previously admitting to firing the gun the night of the shooting, jurors will essentially be asked to decide exactly what level of legal culpability the judge has in his wife’s death. The prosecution has charged him with first-degree murder, as well as sentencing enhancements for the use of a firearm. It isn’t yet clear what the defense plans to argue before the jury.
Ferguson’s attorneys opted not to make their opening statements Wednesday, instead choosing to wait until after the prosecution has put on their evidence. But defense attorneys formerly tied to the case previously described the shooting as a “terribly unfortunate accidental discharge.”
The shooting was the violent culmination of an argument over finances that began at a night out between the couple and their college-age son at a Mexican food restaurant and continued as the family members watched the television show “Breaking Bad” in their family room. The bullet Ferguson fired at his wife tore through her mid-section, struck her organs, went through the chair she was sitting on and embedded in a wall.
During courtroom testimony Wednesday afternoon, the couple’s son, Phillip — who was 22 at the time of the shooting — described hearing his mother exclaim “He shot me,” which would be her final words.
“It took me a second to go ahead and realize what had happened,” the son testified about his immediate reaction to the shooting. “I climbed over the edge of the couch and grabbed my father’s wrist to pin it to the ground to pull the gun from him.”
Immediately after the shooting, Ferguson texted the clerk and the bailiff assigned to the courtroom he had presided over at the Fullerton courthouse, telling them “I Just lost it, I just shot my wife. I won’t be in tomorrow. I will be in custody. I’m so sorry.”
The son performed CPR on his mother as he listened to her breathing become shallower and shallower, according to the recording of a 911 call. By the time first responders arrived, Sheryl Ferguson was no longer breathing.
During his own 911 call, the judge responded to a dispatcher who asked him what happened by saying “I don’t want to talk about it right now, sorry.” Minutes later, one of the first officers to arrive at the Ferguson home described the judge sitting on a planter in the front yard, saying to police “I did it” and “shoot me.”
“What the (expletive) did I do?” the judge was recorded saying in police body-camera footage after being handcuffed. “Oh my God. My son, my son.”
Minutes later, Ferguson told the officer “I never in my wildest dreams thought I would be sitting here in handcuffs in front of my house.. Everyone is going to hate me. My son will now hate me.”
After one of the officers told him his wife had died, Ferguson asked them to bring his son over so that he could “hit me in the (expletive) face.”
“I deserve it,” Ferguson added. “I deserve everything.”
At one point, as he waited to be brought to the police station, Ferguson in his recorded remarks began bragging about his more than three-decade career at the Orange County District Attorneys Office, describing actions he took against members of the Mexican Mafia and an outlaw motorcycle club.
“And here I am,” the judge added. “Here I am now, like them, after all this. And my son is going to hate me.”
Ferguson was an experienced gun owner with a concealed carry license who only took the gun on his ankle holster off to take showers or sleep, Hunt told jurors. In a hearing held before the jury was selected on Tuesday, the prosecutor indicated that Ferguson owned 47 firearms and had 46,000 rounds of ammunition at his house.
Despite having a concealed firearm on him, Ferguson had been drinking the night of the shooting, the prosecutor told jurors, which was a violation of his concealed carry permit. Investigators estimated that the judge had a 0.17 percent blood alcohol level at the time of the shooting, twice the legal limit for driving.
While the defense held off on tipping their legal theory at the beginning of the trial, questions that Cameron Talley, one of Ferguson’s defense attorneys, asked early witnesses hinted that the could argue the shooting was not intentional.
Under questioning by the defense attorney, the 911 dispatcher who spoke to the couple’s son confirmed that he never said his father had shot his mom “on purpose.” And an officer who helped take Ferguson into custody confirmed to the defense attorney that Ferguson never said he “murdered” his wife or that he shot her “on purpose.”
To avoid a conflict of interest among Ferguson’s former judicial colleagues, Los Angeles County Judge Eleanor J. Hunter is presiding over Ferguson’s trial in an Orange County courtroom.
Last year, Judge Hunter doubled Ferguson’s bail to $2 million after she determined he lied to her to cover up consuming alcohol while awaiting trial. At the time, she described Ferguson’s claim that his use of cortisone cream and hand sanitizer had caused a false-positive reading for alcohol on his ankle monitor as “ridiculous.” The judge indicated that the violation of his terms of release and his allegedly lying about it could come up during the murder trial, either if Ferguson takes the stand or during testimony by defense character witnesses.
Judge Hunter also warned Ferguson not to visit friends or former colleagues at the Santa Ana courthouse during breaks in his trial, in order to avoid “the appearance of impropriety.” The packed audience for opening statements on Wednesday morning included DA Todd Spitzer and some of his office’s veteran prosecutors, along with some current judges and court workers.
<