Defense attorneys started their case on Monday in the trial of an Orange County judge who is accused of fatally shooting his wife at the family’s home in 2023.
A video showing the defendant, 74-year-old Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Ferguson, crying in an interrogation room was played for jurors before the defense began.
“It was an accident that resulted from an accidental discharge,” said Ferguson’s defense attorney, Cameron Talley, in his opening statement on Monday.
Talley acknowledged that the judge and his wife got into a heated argument at an Anaheim Hills restaurant on the night she was killed, but he gave a different interpretation of parts of the argument that were described by prosecutor Seton Hunt last week.
“It got so bad, at one point, the defendant – in anger – made a fake gun motion as if he was shooting her,” Hunt said last week.
KTLA’s Chip Yost was listening in when Talley described that gun gesture in a different way.
“He said he’s done the gun sign before, and it meant, ‘You got me, touché, you win,’” said Talley.
Talley also had a different explanation for how things played out when the couple got home later that evening.
Last week, the prosecutor said, “At one point, [his wife] said something to the effect of, ‘Why don’t you use a real gun at me?’”
Hunt said that this resulted in Ferguson pulling a gun from his ankle holster and shooting and killing his wife.
However, Talley said that Ferguson heard his wife say, “Why don’t you put the real gun away for me?”
With this, Talley claimed that the judge was trying to put the gun on a table when it “accidentally” went off.
“He’s going to tell you his shoulder gives way and he fumbles the gun and he leans forward, grabbing it,” explained Talley. “And as he leans forward, grabbing it, he grabs it with his finger slips inside the trigger loop, and bang!”
For more coverage of this trial from last week, click here.
