SANTA ANA (CNS) – Jurors Thursday will resume deliberating the fate of an Orange County Superior Court judge accused of fatally shooting his wife in their Anaheim Hills home.
Jeffrey Ferguson, 74, is charged with murder with sentencing enhancements for discharge of a gun causing death and the personal use of a gun for the Aug. 3, 2023, death of his 65-year-old wife, Sheryl. Jurors began deliberating Wednesday afternoon and will resume Thursday.
“You have been presented with evidence — credible evidence — he took out the gun, he was angry,” Senior Deputy District Attorney Seton Hunt told jurors Wednesday in his closing argument. “He took the gun out, pointed at her and killed her.”
Hunt said it was a “sad, tragic situation, but he (Ferguson) is still guilty of murder.”
Countering a defense argument that the shooting was accidental, Hunt characterized the defendant as an “experienced gun owner … He had it on him at all times.”
Ferguson even “instructed his son to not point it in any direction of anything you don’t intend to destroy,” Hunt said. “He was also an expert on the law” as a prosecutor of 30 years and nine years on the bench.
“That puts him in a unique position as a defendant — he knows how to answer certain questions, and how to evade others,” Hunt said.
Hunt argued that a text message the judge sent to his bailiff and clerk minutes after the shooting was a “confession.” In the text message, Ferguson said, “I just lost it. Just shot my wife. I won’t be in tomorrow. I will be in custody. I’m so sorry.”
“He describes what he just did,” Hunt said. “We all know what this means. He lost his temper and shot his wife.”
Hunt argued the most reliable account of the shooting that the defendant’s son, Phillip Ferguson, gave was to police right after it happened. Phillip Ferguson’s testimony during the trial at times conflicted with what he told police in separate interviews, including one that occurred after he met with a defense investigator.
The prosecutor played a portion of the son’s call to 911 when he told a dispatcher his father shot his mother following an argument that had been ongoing “since dinner.”
The night of the shooting, the three Fergusons had gone to a restaurant, but Sheryl Ferguson stormed out for about 10 minutes after the defendant made a hand gesture of a gun during their dispute. Before the shooting later in their home, Phillip Ferguson said he heard her say something to the effect of, “Why don’t you point a real gun at me?”
Hunt played video of the son telling police later, “I turned around and he pulls out a gun and aims at her and fires.”
Hunt ridiculed as “ridiculous” Ferguson’s claim that his wife had asked him to put his ankle-holstered gun away, and that he fumbled it while trying to place it on a cluttered coffee table, causing it to discharge.
Phillip Ferguson said his mother’s last words were, “He shot me,” Hunt noted.
“They weren’t `Gosh, what an accident,”‘ Hunt said.
The prosecutor also disputed the judge’s claim that his disabled shoulder caused him to fumble the gun, saying the defendant showed full use of his arm during police questioning.
Hunt said the gun requires five pounds of pressure to depress the trigger. Doing that while fumbling with a gun in the air and then hitting the victim at “center mass” is “ludicrous,” Hunt argued.
“His own story sets him up for implied malice murder,” Hunt said, adding the way he says he was handling the weapon shows a “conscious disregard for life.”
Ferguson’s blood-alcohol level was 0.065 percent when it was measured seven hours after the shooting, Hunt said. An expert testified it was likely about 0.17 percent, or nearly twice the legal limit for driving, at the time of the shooting, Hunt noted.
Ferguson’s attorney, Cameron Talley, argued that the prosecution’s theory is “flawed due to a fundamental misunderstanding of how guns work.”
Talley noted how Hunt referred to loading bullets in the gun during the trial when the weapon uses magazines. Talley also said the pathway of the bullet disproves any legal theory that Ferguson’s arm was crooked at a 45- degree angle.
“I’m going to prove he’s innocent,” Talley said. “And I’m going to do it with government witnesses.”
Talley noted one detective’s testimony about how far the casing from the gun’s projectile would go if it were fired the way the prosecution theorized. But Talley said it was found right next to the coffee table, which was consistent with his theory of an accidental shooting.
Talley also argued that home surveillance video also indicated there was no muzzle flash, which was also consistent with an accidental misfire.
The bullet ripped through the victim’s abdomen “slightly to the left” and exited the upper right of her back, which would match the angle of where the defendant said the gun misfired, Talley argued.
Talley also argued there was no evidence his client was angry, but, he said, he was attempting to make peace and end the conflict.
“He’s not mad,” Talley said. “Where’s this drunken rage coming from?”
Talley accused Hunt of attempting to have it both ways with two separate legal theories of second-degree murder of expressed malice, which requires intent to kill, and implied malice, which does not require intent.
The defense attorney also said Hunt was presenting a “backup position” of involuntary manslaughter.
“If it’s implied malice then the text (the judge sent to his bailiff and clerk) doesn’t make sense,” Talley argued. “So it can’t be both. It can’t be intentional if he’s in a drunken rage. So which is it? Was it intentional or not?”
Talley also argued against involuntary manslaughter, which requires criminal negligence and a “high risk of injury,” which he argued there wasn’t any evidence of in the case.
“The forensics are on the side of the defense, the autopsy is on the side of the defense and the science is on the side of the defense,” Talley said.
In his rebuttal, Hunt questioned Talley’s reliance on the testimony of an Anaheim detective, who was not qualified as a ballistics expert.
“He’s not relying on his client’s ridiculous defense because it doesn’t make any sense,” Hunt said.
He also said the bullet could have ricocheted, leaving the casing next to the coffee table, adding the crime scene was disturbed by first responders who were attempting to revive the victim as their first priority when they arrived on scene.
There is no way to know for sure at what angle the defendant fired the gun, Hunt argued.
“I didn’t suggest he didn’t have a shoulder injury,” the prosecutor said. “I said there’s no evidence it prevented him from holding a gun.”
Ferguson and his wife had been bickering after the judge got home from work that afternoon and continued the argument as they went to the El Cholo Mexican restaurant near their home, where the judge made the gun gesture with his hand that offended her.
Just before the shooting, Ferguson said he thought he heard his wife tell him to put his gun away, which confused him initially, but then he went to do it to appease her.
“I was trying to do what she asked me to do,” he said. “I never pointed it in her direction.”
Hunt suggested Ferguson could have gone upstairs and put the gun away as he routinely did each night before going to bed.
“I could have done a lot of things,” Ferguson said.
Ferguson said it was difficult to lean forward to place the gun on the coffee table because of his girth at the time. He weighed 100 pounds more the night of the shooting.
“I couldn’t lean too far forward because my stomach wouldn’t permit it,” he said, explaining why he was extending his shoulder, which was missing three of four tendons since 2015 surgery.
The judge said that when he returned home from work the day of the shooting, he downed a 16-ounce beer and then a rum and Coke. Ferguson did not recall drinking an old fashioned during a work lunch break at a local restaurant until Hunt showed him a receipt. Ferguson said when he did drink on a lunch break from work it was one once or twice a week and it was usually a gin and tonic.
When asked if he was an alcoholic, the judge said, “I don’t think I thought so. I drank too much and was in denial so I suppose I was.”
He estimated he would drink three days of the week.
The trouble on the day of the shooting started when Sheryl Ferguson checked the mail and didn’t see an expected thank you card from her husband’s son from his prior marriage.
Kevin Ferguson, who was 37 at the time, had adopted a daughter who was a few months old earlier that summer and the judge, his wife and their son, Phillip, who was a senior at Southern Methodist University, visited them at their home in Highland Park.
The defendant and his wife would argue about financially aiding Kevin Ferguson, the judge testified.
“What annoyed her was he didn’t express his appreciation or gratitude,” Jeffrey Ferguson testified. “Sheryl (also) had hopes that Kevin and Phillip would have a stronger family bond … but Kevin never sent birthday cards to Phillip, or her or me … but he would ask us to send cards to his wife.”
So the dispute on the night of the shooting “was about not getting a thank you card” 10 days after Kevin Ferguson had received $2,000 from the couple and promised to send a card, the judge testified.
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