California judge arrested after his wife found shot, killed in Anaheim home

A California Superior Court judge was arrested on suspicion of shooting and killing his wife in their home Thursday night, police said. 

Anaheim Police officers received reports of a shooting from a home on east Canyon Drive  just after 8 p.m. When officers arrived at the home, they found 65-year-old Sheryl Ferguson with a gunshot wound. 

She was declared dead on scene, police reported.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Ferguson was arrested on scene. He was taken to Anaheim Police Department's Detention Facility and was being held on a $1 million bail, the Associated Press reported.  

Ferguson is expected to appear in court on Monday in Santa Ana.

No additional information was made available. 

Who is Jeffrey Ferguson?

Ferguson was elected as a judge in 2014 and took office in 2015. He handles criminal cases in a courthouse in the Orange County city of Fullerton, AP reported. 

He began his legal career with  Orange County district attorney's office in 1983 and went on to work narcotics cases, for which he won various awards, according to AP. 

Ferguson was honored as an “attorney of the year” by the North Orange County Bar Association during his time as a prosecutor.  Ferguson served as the organization's president from 2012 to 2014.

In 2017, Ferguson was reprimanded by the Commission on Judicial Performance for posting a statement on Facebook about a judicial candidate “with knowing or reckless disregard for the truth of the statement” and for being Facebook friends with attorneys appearing before him in court, according to a copy of the agency's findings, AP reported.

Ferguson said on his Facebook page that he grew up in a military family and traveled throughout Asia as a child. He went on to attend college and law school in California. He and his wife were married in 1996, AP reported. 

He was previously married to another woman, and they had a son. He and Sheryl Ferguson have another son together, said Juli Mitchell, the sister of his ex-wife.