Orange Superior criminal judge Jeffrey Ferguson was arrested Aug. 3 under an accusation of killing his wife. He was released from the Intake Release Center Aug. 4. Jail records show the bond being $0.
The arrest was made under Penal Code 187, which defines murder. Formal charges have not been filed in Orange.
Follow Our Courts reached out to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office and the California Attorney General’s Office for comment on the case’s potential prosecution. Contact information for Ferguson could not be found.
Ferguson won election to the judgeship in the June 2014 election with 62% of the votes. He ran against Commissioner Carmen Leuge. Ferguson is a past-president of the North Orange County Bar Association, according to their website.
He joined the bar in 1982, and spent most of his career at the Orange County District Attorney’s Office. He was a senior deputy district attorney before his election, according to his Facebook campaign page.
The Commission on Judicial Ethics admonished him two years into his term for making a derogatory statement about a candidate for judicial office.
The candidate, Deputy District Attorney Karen Schatzle, had claimed her opponent in the 2016 judicial race used his judge’s chamber for sex. That opponent, sitting Orange Superior Judge Scott Steiner, had been censured by the Commission in 2014 for having sex in his judge chambers with his intern and a practicing attorney. Schatzle posted her comment on the North Orange County Bar Association’s Facebook page.
Ferguson publicly supported Steiner. He replied to Schatzle’s post with a claim that she had sex with a defense attorney while they opposed each other in criminal cases. Schatzle denied this claim to the Commission and in a federal complaint filed against the Orange County District Attorney’s office which alleged retaliation.
Ferguson deleted the comment after Schatzle replied that the Commission would be interested in seeing it.
The Commission found that Ferguson’s statement was made with knowing or reckless disregard for the truth.
Steiner won reelection with 55% of the vote.
