Attorneys are set to make their closing arguments Monday in the retrial of an Orange County judge accused of fatally shooting his wife.
Jeffrey Ferguson, 74, is charged with killing his 65-year-old wife, Sheryl Ferguson, on Aug. 3, 2023.
Senior Deputy District Attorney Seton Hunt on cross-examination Friday continued to grill Ferguson about his claim that he was attempting to place the gun on a cluttered coffee table when his bum shoulder gave out, causing him to fumble the weapon and accidentally fire it.
Hunt posed a hypothetical to the defendant, asking if placing a gun pointed just a few feet from someone would be appropriate at a shooting range.
“It depends,” Ferguson said.
“You think this is maybe appropriate … to have a loaded firearm pointed in this direction at a gun range?” Hunt asked.
“I can’t answer that yes or no exactly,” Ferguson replied.
Ferguson, a gun enthusiast who has carried a concealed weapon for years due to past death threats as a prosecutor, said it’s common to set down loaded guns at shooting ranges.
“You’ve been drinking, let’s add that,” Hunt asked.
“It’s not appropriate to be drinking at a gun range,” Ferguson said.
“Take out the drinking, a couple of feet away, 3 feet away” from another person, Hunt asked.
“The circumstances you describe wouldn’t be appropriate at a gun range,” Ferguson responded.
Prosecutors said Ferguson had been bickering with the victim since she got home from work on the day of the shooting. He had a drink at lunch and continued drinking when he got home and when they stepped out for dinner at a local restaurant. It reached a key point at the restaurant when the judge made a hand gesture like a gun at her, which he claimed was his way of saying “touche.”
The shooting happened as the feud climaxed with Sheryl Ferguson asking him, “Why don’t you point a real gun at me,” Hunt said.
“You brought the gun into the situation and that was inherently dangerous,” Hunt continued.
“I don’t think so,” Ferguson responded.
Hunt also questioned Ferguson’s claim of accidentally triggering a gun that needed a five-pound pull.
Hunt also challenged Ferguson on how unlikely it was that he struck his wife “center mass” — the area gun owners are trained to aim for in self-defense — if the shooting had truly been accidental.
“Actually, I did not” shoot the victim center mass, Ferguson said. “I don’t believe that was center mass.”
Ferguson said, “My intent was to set the gun on the table not pointed at Sheryl.”
“Of all the places you could hit her it was center mass,” Hunt said.
Ferguson’s attorney, Cameron Talley, offered his own hypothetical of “cranking off rounds in the desert” with others. He asked him if a gun were set down near another gun owner, “would a person jump up and run away thinking they were going to die?”
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Eleanor Hunter, who is presiding over the trial, sustained Hunt’s objections to the question.
Hunt also pressed Ferguson about the ethics of doing multiple television news interviews following his first trial, which ended in a mistrial when jurors deadlocked 11-1 for guilt on second-degree murder. He denied he was trying to taint the jury pool.
“As a judge, I don’t want someone to feel sympathy for me, but as a human being I do,” Ferguson said under Talley’s questioning.
Ferguson said that because he was accustomed to handling his gun at bedtime and in the morning, he didn’t consider taking it out the night of the shooting to be inherently dangerous.
Prosecutors are expected to argue, as they did in the first trial, that taking out the gun while drunk during an argument represented at least what lawyers call “implied malice,” which is an element of second-degree murder.
“I didn’t think it was inherently dangerous taking it out,” Ferguson said.
But Ferguson did agree with Hunt that he could have just gotten up and put the gun away in his office safe or put it away upstairs in his bedroom as he did each night.
Ferguson also agreed with Hunt that it was wrong to handle a gun when angry and depressed. The prosecutor also questioned Ferguson about drinking while on the job.
“You would regularly drink at lunch when you were a judge,” Hunt said.
“I would have a drink at lunch, maybe a couple of times a week,” Ferguson said. “After one drink or a beer, I would go back to work.”
As for the apparently incriminating statements Ferguson volunteered to police following the shooting, he emphasized he was not providing a “legal analysis” of what he did, but was scolding himself.
“I was upset, confused and castigating myself,” Ferguson said. “I felt terrible. I felt tremendous emotional guilt. I wanted to climb into a wall… I still feel terrible about this situation.”
Talley asked him, “Did you try to kill Sheryl?”
“Of course not,” he said.
“Were you mad when the gun went off?” Talley asked.
“The opposite. No, I was not mad,” Ferguson said. “It was an accident. It was an accidental discharge.”
As for his drinking on the job, Ferguson said he felt “lulled” into it hanging out with his friends in law enforcement, who would also drink on the job and carry a weapon.
“It’s wrong for them to do it, it was wrong for me to do it,” Ferguson said.
