California's Orange County judge convicted of drunkenly killing wife gets 35 years to life in prison

Ruben Vives and Christopher Goffard, Los Angeles Times on Sep 17, 2025

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LOS ANGELES — An Orange County Superior Court judge was sentenced Wednesday to 35 years to life in prison for fatally shooting his wife during a “drunken argument,” according to prosecutors.

Jeffrey Ferguson, 74, was convicted in April of fatally shooting his 65-year-old wife, Sheryl, during a fight over money at their Anaheim Hills home on Aug. 3, 2023, prosecutors said in a written statement.

During his testimony, Ferguson admitted that he was an alcoholic and that he had been drinking that day. The couple had been married for 27 years.

Jurors convicted Ferguson on one felony count of murder and one felony enhancement of personal use of a firearm, as well as one felony enhancement of discharge of a firearm causing great bodily injury and death.

Ferguson was first put on trial in March, but a mistrial was declared when the jury deadlocked on a charge of second-degree murder. He was retried and convicted the following month.

Prosecutors say Ferguson and his wife were in their family room watching “Breaking Bad” when they began to quarrel.

“Instead of rendering aid to his wife, Sheryl, after shooting her as they sat in their living room watching television, Judge Jeffrey Ferguson, then 72, went outside and texted his court bailiff and clerk: ‘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 district attorney’s office said in a written statement released following his conviction.

The couple’s son tackled his father to wrestle the gun away, and performed CPR on his mother while being directed by emergency dispatchers, prosecutors said.

In the hours after the shooting, an inebriated Ferguson wished aloud in a police interview room for the death penalty, demanded to be punched in the face and predicted that he would burn in hell, according to video prosecutors showed during trial. He agonized over the couple’s son, who had just witnessed his mother’s violent death, and vowed not to cheat the law with “subterfuge.”

“Convict my ass,” Ferguson muttered to an imaginary jury in a police interview room.

Facing a real jury in a Santa Ana courtroom 18 months later, threatened with prison and the end of his pension as a judge, a sober Ferguson cast his wife’s death as an accident and denied criminal blame.

“We loved each other a lot,” Ferguson testified. “We didn’t argue all the time.”

Ferguson and his wife had been having a familiar fight that day. He told jurors that she was upset because they had sent money to his grown son from a previous marriage, but had not received a thank you card.

The argument continued over dinner at a restaurant, where he pointed his finger at her in imitation of a gun, making her so upset she left the table.

Ferguson told jurors his gesture had not been one of menace but of capitulation, a way of saying, “You win.”

The quarrel continued back at home. Their son, Phillip, told police he heard his mother say, “Why don’t you point a real gun at me?” before his father extended his arm and fired.

But Ferguson told jurors that is not what he heard his wife say. Instead, he said he heard: “Why don’t you put the real gun away from me?”

Ferguson said he responded by unsnapping his ankle holster, removing his Glock, and attempting to put it on the coffee table, because “I just wanted to please her.” He said he was missing tendons in his right arm.

“My arm failed,” he said. “I got a shooting pain. ... I was trying to clutch it so it wouldn’t drop, and it fired. ... She had a very surprised look on her face.”

His son tackled him and wrested the gun away.

“I was kind of in shell shock,” Ferguson said.

But jurors ultimately did not buy that testimony.

“The second he pulled the trigger and killed his wife Judge Jeffrey Ferguson knew he was just like the violent criminals he has sent to prison and left his son to desperately try to pump the life into his dying mother’s body while he went outside to text his friends,” Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer said in April. “This was not an accident. Ferguson was trained to never point a gun at anything he didn’t intend to destroy.”

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