LOS ANGELES (AP) — A California judge charged with killing his wife was taken back into custody Tuesday after the judge overseeing his criminal case contended that he lied about drinking alcohol while out on bail.
Orange County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Ferguson's new bail was set at $2 million and he was placed in handcuffs and led out of the courtroom after a hearing about whether he had violated his prior bail conditions.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Eleanor J. Hunter said if Ferguson is able to pay the new bail, he will be barred from attending any establishment that serves alcohol.
“I hate it when people lie to me,” Hunter said. “Let's not forget — this is a murder case.”
Ferguson, 73, was previously out on $1 million bail. He is charged with the murder of his wife last year and has pleaded not guilty.
Ferguson was required to wear a GPS and alcohol monitor on his ankle as a condition of his prior bail — a condition that will remain if he makes bail again.
The monitor registered that he had been drinking alcohol in late August. Ferguson told the court he had applied hand sanitizer and other medication to try to alleviate ankle swelling, which Hunter said was a “ridiculous story.”
Ferguson's attorney, Ed Welbourn, declined to comment immediately after the hearing. In court, Welbourn had asked the judge to consider less restrictive options due to Ferguson’s health issues.
“Is he a danger to society? The answer to that is no,” Welbourn told the court. “The court knows his background. He’s not a danger to anybody.”
Prosecutor Seton Hunt said during the hearing that it was clear Ferguson had violated bail conditions. He declined to comment after Tuesday’s hearing.
Ferguson was arrested in August 2023 after police found his wife, Sheryl Ferguson, shot to death. Prosecutors said the couple had been arguing and Ferguson drinking when he pulled a pistol from an ankle holster and shot her in the chest.
Ferguson and his son called 911, and Ferguson texted his court clerk and bailiff saying: “I just lost it. I just shot my wife. I won’t be in tomorrow. I will be in custody. I’m so sorry,” according to prosecutors’ court filings.
Authorities said they later found 47 weapons, including the pistol, and more than 26,000 rounds of ammunition at Ferguson’s home.
Ferguson was released on a lengthy list of bail conditions, including that he wear the alcohol monitor. Shaun Stewart, who works for the manufacturer of the anklet, testified in court on Tuesday that the device takes a sample of sweat vapor every 30 minutes and measures for the presence of alcohol. He said hand sanitizer and medication don't typically trigger the device, but when they do the measurements are not consistent with those of someone who drinks.
Stewart said his company applies a series of criteria to determine whether an alcohol reading indicates someone has actually been drinking and the client is given the benefit of the doubt.
“Normal use of hand sanitizer on the hands would not produce any type of alcohol reading on the bracelet,” Stewart told the court. “I can say this is a confirmed consumption.”
The reading was generated on two days at the end August. Ferguson told the court he had not been drinking on those days, but had gone out to lunch with two Orange County judges on one of the days, and didn't believe they had been drinking either, Hunter said.
Ferguson has been a judge since 2015. He started his legal career in the Orange County district attorney’s office in 1983, and served as president of the North Orange County Bar Association from 2012 to 2014.
He was admonished by the Commission on Judicial Performance in 2017 for posting a statement on Facebook about a judicial candidate “with knowing or reckless disregard for the truth of the statement.”
Ferguson and his wife married in 1996.
The arrest shocked the Southern California legal community. The district attorney’s office in Orange County, which is home to 3 million people, is trying the case but hearings are being held before a Los Angeles County judge to avoid a conflict.
Ferguson is due back in court for a pre-trial hearing on Nov. 1.
FILE - Investigators remove firearms from Judge Jeffrey Ferguson's residence in Anaheim, Calif., on Aug. 4, 2023. (Paul Bersebach/The Orange County Register via AP, File)
FILE - Orange County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Ferguson walks out of court after attending a preliminary hearing in Los Angeles, Thursday, June 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)
FILE - Orange County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Ferguson appears during a hearing at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center, Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2023, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, Pool, File)
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Swedish authorities accused Iran on Tuesday of being responsible for thousands of text messages sent to people in Sweden calling for revenge over the burnings of Islam's holy book in 2023. Iran denied the accusation.
According to officials in Stockholm, the cyberattack was carried out by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which hacked an SMS service and sent “some 15,000 text messages in Swedish” over the string of public burnings of the Quran that took place over several months in Sweden during the summer of 2023.
Senior prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist said a preliminary investigation by Sweden’s SAPO domestic security agency showed “it was the Iranian state via the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGC, that carried out a data breach at a Swedish company that runs a major SMS service.”
The Swedish company was not named.
The Iranian Embassy in Sweden in a statement rejected the accusation as “baseless” and said it was intended to “poison” relations between Tehran and Stockholm, the official IRNA news agency reported. The embassy expects the Swedish government to prevent the spread of such statements, the report said.
In August 2023, Swedish media reported that a large number of people in Sweden had received text messages in Swedish calling for revenge against people who were burning the Quran, Ljungqvist said, adding that the sender of the messages was “a group calling itself the Anzu team.”
Swedish broadcaster SVT published a photo of a text message, saying that “those who desecrated the Quran must have their work covered in ashes” and calling Swedes “demons.”
The protests were held under the freedom of speech act, which is protected under the Swedish constitution. The rallies were approved by police. However, the incidents left Sweden torn between its commitment to free speech and its respect for religious minorities.
The clash of fundamental principles had complicated Sweden’s desire to join NATO, an expansion that gained urgency after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine but needed the approval of all alliance members.
Turkey and its President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had temporarily blocked Sweden's accession, citing reasons including anti-Turkish and anti-Islamic protests in Stockholm but Sweden finally became a NATO member in March.
At the time, the Swedish government said it “strongly rejects the Islamophobic act committed by individuals in Sweden,” adding that the desecrations did not reflect the country's stand.
In July last year, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a statement saying that “the insult to the Holy Quran in Sweden is a bitter, conspiratorial, dangerous event” and that the desecrations have “created feelings of hatred and enmity" in Muslim nations toward the people burning the Quran and their governments.
In a separate statement, SAPO’s operational manager Fredrik Hallström said Tuesday that the intent of the text messages was to "paint the image of Sweden as an Islamophobic country and create division in society.”
He accused “foreign powers" of seeking to “exploit vulnerabilities” and said they were "now acting more and more aggressively, and this is a development that is likely to escalate.” He did not name any specific country.
Meanwhile, Sweden's justice minister, Gunnar Strömmer, told Swedish news agency TT “that a state actor, in this case Iran, according to (SAPO's) assessment is behind an action that aims to destabilize Sweden or increase polarization in our country is of course very serious.”
There is no law in Sweden specifically prohibiting the burning or desecration of the Quran or other religious texts. Like many Western countries, Sweden doesn’t have any blasphemy laws.
“Since the actors are acting for a foreign power, in this case Iran, we make the assessment that the conditions for prosecution abroad or extradition to Sweden are lacking for the persons suspected of being behind the breach,“ Ljungqvist said.
Ljungqvist, who is with the Sweden's top prosecution authority, said that although the preliminary investigation has been closed, it “does not mean that the suspected hackers have been completely written off” and that the probe could be reopened.
Sweden’s domestic security agency in May accused Iran of using established criminal networks in Sweden as a proxy to target Israeli or Jewish interests in the Scandinavian country.
Iran’s Embassy in Sweden could not be reached for a comment on Tuesday.
Associated Press writer Jari Tanner in Helsinki contributed to this report.
FILE -A demonstrator throws an egg at the Swedish Embassy during a protest for the desecration of the Quran in Sweden, July 21, 2023, in Tehran, Iran. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE -A demonstrator holds up a copy of the Quran, Islam's holy book, during a protest of the burning of a Quran in Sweden, in front of the Swedish Embassy in Tehran, Iran, June 30, 2023. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
