A Southern California judge was convicted on Tuesday of second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of his wife in August 2023 after what prosecutors described as a “drunken argument over money.”
The judge, Jeffrey Ferguson of Orange County Superior Court, 74, faces 40 years to life in prison at his sentencing on June 13, according to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.
Prosecutors said that on Aug. 3, 2023, Judge Ferguson shot his wife, Sheryl Ferguson, 65, at their home in Anaheim Hills, Calif., southeast of Los Angeles.
Prosecutors said that the judge pulled a pistol from an ankle holster and shot Ms. Ferguson once in the chest at close range as they watched television in the living room.
The judge then went outside, prosecutors said, and texted his court bailiff and clerk. “I just lost it,” he wrote. “I just shot my wife. I won’t be in tomorrow. I will be in custody. I’m so sorry.”
The judge’s son, who was with them that night, called 911 to report that his mother had been shot after she told her husband, “Why don’t you point a real gun at me?” prosecutors said.
Judge Ferguson had used his fingers to simulate pointing a gun at his wife during an argument at a Mexican restaurant earlier that evening, prosecutors said.
The judge’s son, who is in his 20s, wrestled the gun away from him after the shooting, and then performed CPR on his mother, following the instructions of emergency dispatchers, prosecutors said.
When the police arrived, they found Ms. Ferguson fatally shot in the living room. Judge Ferguson smelled of alcohol, court documents said, and he was still wearing his ankle holster, which was empty.
The police later executed a search warrant at the home and recovered 48 weapons, including rifles, shotguns and handguns, and more than 26,000 rounds of ammunition, prosecutors said.
The judge had testified that the shooting was accidental.
“I didn’t mean to kill her, I didn’t mean to shoot her, I didn’t mean to do anything like that,” he told the jury last week, according to The Orange County Register.
Cameron Talley, the judge’s lawyer, said in an interview on Wednesday that he planned to appeal the conviction, which came after the judge’s first trial resulted last month in a deadlocked jury and a mistrial.
Mr. Talley said that Judge Ferguson was missing tendons in his shoulder and that when he moved to put the gun on a coffee table, his shoulder “gave out” and accidentally caused the gun to fire.
“It’s not that the gun wasn’t in his hand when it discharged,” Mr. Talley said. “Our contention is that it was an accidental discharge.”
The Orange County district attorney, Todd Spitzer, rejected that argument, saying in a statement that “this was not an accident.”
“Ferguson was trained to never point a gun at anything he didn’t intend to destroy,” Mr. Spitzer said. “On Aug. 3, 2023, he took his gun out of his ankle holster and pointed it at exactly what he wanted to destroy — his wife of 27 years — and then he pulled the trigger and destroyed everything.”
Judge Ferguson, who has been a judge since 2015, has remained on the bench with pay since his arrest, although he has not been hearing cases, Mr. Talley said. Now that he has been convicted, he will lose his seat on the court, Mr. Talley added.
Before he became a judge, he was a prosecutor for more than 30 years in the Orange County District Attorney’s Office. The office said that it had checked with the California Attorney General’s Office, which had determined that it could still prosecute the case, despite Judge Ferguson’s status as a former employee.
