California judge arrested in murder of his wife

ANAHEIM, Calif. (CN) — Homicide detectives arrested an Orange County, California Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Ferguson late Thursday in the shooting death of his wife.

Just after 8 p.m. Thursday night, Anaheim police officers responded to reports of a shooting in the 8500 block of E. Canyon Vista Drive in the affluent Anaheim Hills neighborhood. They found 65-year-old Sheryl Ferguson "suffering from at least one gunshot wound," according to an Anaheim Police Department press release. Shortly thereafter, she was pronounced dead.

Police arrested Judge Ferguson for murder "without incident," and booked him into the police department's detention facility, with bail set at $1 million.

"Detectives are not disclosing any additional details at this time because the investigation is ongoing," the department said in the statement.

The 72-year-old Ferguson, a former prosecutor, has been an elected judge since 2015. He was publicly admonished by the California Commission on Judicial Performance in 2017 for some of his social media activity which was deemed to have violated the code of judicial ethics.

According to the published admonishment, in 2016 Ferguson supported one candidate for judicial office, Judge Scott Steiner, who was running against prosecutor Karen Schatzle. Steiner himself had been censured by the commission in 2014 for "conduct that included sexual activity in the courthouse."

In April 2016, Schatzle posted on the North Orange County Bar Association's Facebook page: "Scott Steiner uses his office for sex and yet so many aren't concerned, crazy politics!"

Judge Ferguson responded: "Karen Shatzle [sic] has sex with defense lawyer whike [sic] shw [sic] is a DA on his cases and nobody cares. Interesting politics."

The comment drew the ire of the commission. "The commission found that Judge Ferguson's post claiming that Ms. Schatzle was having sex at the time, or had sex in the past, with a defense attorney while she was a prosecutor on his cases was made with knowing or reckless disregard for the truth," the commission said in the admonishment. "Judge Ferguson acknowledged that he was wrong to write the post, recognized that it fell outside the bounds of professionalism and the decorum expected of a bench officer, and apologized for his conduct."

The commission also cited Ferguson for failing to disclose that he was Facebook friends with a number of criminal defense attorneys.

Although judicial elections are nonpartisan in California, Ferguson's candidate statement in 2014 revealed his conservative leanings. He said he believed in "limited government," and supported the Second Amendment and the "death penalty in certain cases."

"Public safety and crime victims' rights have been my top priority as a prosecutor, and will remain my top priority as a judge," Ferguson said in the candidate statement.

Source: courthousenews.com, Hillel Aron, August 4, 2023

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