Sitting outside Anaheim Hills's house with handcuffed hands on her back, Jeffrey Ferguson murmured and enraged and sobbed. He boasted of past glories, of putting out of the bars, and regretted that his son would now hate him forever.
It was August 3, 2023, and Ferguson, 72, had just shot his wife after a heavy drink night. They had been in the family hall, watching the last season of “Breaking Bad”, and had fired a single round from his Glock .40 caliber in view of his 22 -year -old son, Phillip. The bullet had entered the middle section of Sheryl Ferguson, 65, left at the top of his back, passed through the chair behind her and stayed on the wall.
Now, Ferguson sat on a short shelf outside while the paramedics fought and failed to save his life. The officers emptied their pockets, and one of them asked: “What is your occupation, sir?”
There was a long pause, and Ferguson sighed before responding.
“I am a judge of the Superior Court.”
The exchange, captured in the officer's body chamber, was played for jurors this week in the Superior Court of Orange County in Santa Ana, where Ferguson, now 74 years old, is in trial for a murder position. His defense lawyers have not played that Ferguson shot and killed his wife, but argue that it was accidental.
Ferguson, who was a prosecutor for a long time before being a judge, had a hidden transport permit and a “great experience” with firearms, Orange County deputy. Atty Seton Hunt told the jurors in his opening statement on Wednesday. Ferguson kept his glock loaded into a velcro ankle cover and used it everywhere “unless he was showering or sleeping,” said Hunt.
At the time of the shooting, he said, Ferguson had a blood alcohol level of .17, more than double the legal driving limit, after drinking beer, rum and margaritas in the previous hours.
Prosecutor Seton Hunt told the jurors that Judge Jeffrey Ferguson had a “vast experience” with firearms and regularly wore his glock in a velcro ankle cover.
(Frederick M. Brown / Pool Photo through AP)
“I killed her. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, condemn my butt. I did it, ”said Ferguson in a police interview room, in a video that the prosecutor showed jurors. “I owe my son. … Convist me. … Send me on my way. “
Phillip Ferguson, the son who witnessed the shooting, testified on Wednesday that he had been attending the Southern Methodist University in 2023, but who was at home with his parents in Anaheim Hills that summer.
He said he knew his parents to argue, sometimes he enters the screaming matches when his father drank, but did not remember that he fought that summer. Nor, he said, if he had witnessed that his father committed violence against her before.
But that night, Phillip Ferguson testified, his parents heatedly argued about money, a dispute that began at home and continued during dinner at the El Cholo restaurant, where his father pointed to his index finger by imitating a gun.
The argument advanced when everyone came home and saw “Breaking Bad” in the family hall, and at one point he heard his mother say: “Why don't you point to me a real weapon?”
Phillip Ferguson said he turned and saw his father extend a gun and shoot his mother.
“I jumped or went up to the sofa and grabbed my father's doll to fix it to the ground,” he testified. “While jumping on the couch, I heard her say: 'He shot me'.”
The son called 911 and made chest compressions in his mother until the paramedics arrived. He said he has stayed with his father from time to time from the shooting and that they have repaired their relationship.
He said that before the shooting, his father would take him to the shooting field and instruct in arms security. He recalled his father's lessons: “The weapon always points in a safe direction. Never point your firearm to something that does not intend to destroy. And never put your finger in the trigger unless I intend to use the weapon. “
The judge of the Superior Court of Los Angeles, Eleanor Hunter, presides over Ferguson's murder trial because his fellow judges in the Orange County Court have been challenged.
(Frederick M. Brown / Pool Photo through AP)
Ferguson's defense lawyers resigned from their right to an opening statement, and remains to be seen how they will present the case that the shooting was accidental. Doing so may require the defendant to testify. That would be risky, partly because the judge of the Superior Court of Los Angeles, Eleanor Hunter, who presides over the case because Orange County judges have been challenged, warned Ferguson that he can be interrogated about his previous treatment with her.
Last year, Hunter ruled that Ferguson had consumed alcohol while waiting for the trial, a violation of his bail conditions, and then lied about it. She ridiculed her statement that her use of cortisol cream, not alcohol, had activated her ankle monitor, and she doubled her bail at $ 2 million.
“You lied during a previous hearing when it said it was Cortisol who put his bracelet,” the judge told him at a prior hearing this week. He was “Juerguista” and “Maduro for the interrogation,” said the judge.
Defensor lawyer Cameron Talley said such questions would be “so incredibly harmful that he would require a null trial.”
At the same audience, Talley revealed that Ferguson still had the chair with the hole of the bullet and kept it in his living room, a fact that seemed to surprise the judge.
“In your living room, yet?” She asked.
“Yes, honor,” Talley said.
Ferguson, who had been presiding over a Court Chamber in Fullerton before his arrest, continues to pay his annual salary of more than $ 220,000 plus benefits, but is no longer listening to cases.
In the minutes after the shooting, as reflected in the video camera video of the police officer, Ferguson sat off his home in Canyon Vista Drive, sobbing, punishing himself and asking the police repeatedly if his wife was dead
“I owe my son. … Convist me. … Send me on my way, ”Ferguson told the police in a video shared with the jurors in his trial for murder.
(Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)
“Never in my wildest dreams I thought I would be sitting here in front of my house with wives,” he said.
An officer asked how long he had been a judge.
“Nine years,” Ferguson said.
And before that?
“I was attached district fiscal for 32 years as a mother,” said the judge. He boasted to process members of the Mexican mafia, a prison gang; and of the vague motorcycle gang.
“And here I am now, like them, after all this,” he said. “My son is going to hate me. … My son “.
More than half an hour after the shooting, an officer informed Ferguson that his wife was dead. Ferguson said he wanted his son to hit him on the face.
“I deserve it. … What will you do now? said.
Before being taken to the squad car, Ferguson had another thought for the police.
“You arrived a little late arriving here, by the way,” he said. “It's not your fault.”
The testimony is expected to continue on Monday.
