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3. Judge’s life ‘in ruins’ despite mistrial…

Criminal Justice

Judge’s life ‘in ruins’ despite mistrial in prosecution for fatally shooting wife, defense lawyer says

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 12, 2025, 9:09 am CDT

Jurors in Los Angeles were unable to agree on a verdict in the case of a California judge who texted court personnel after fatally shooting his wife, saying he won’t be at work the next day because “I just lost it. I just shot my wife.”

A mistrial was declared Monday after jurors were unable to reach a verdict on a second-degree murder charge against Judge Jeffrey Ferguson of the Orange County Superior Court in California, report Law360, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press.

Eleven out of 12 jurors had voted for conviction. They had deliberated for eight days.

Ferguson’s lawyer had argued that Ferguson accidentally pulled the trigger while trying to place his gun onto the coffee table. He had killed his wife, Sheryl, in August 2023 while watching the AMC TV show Breaking Bad at their home and arguing about finances.

At the time, Ferguson was 72 years old, and he had fumbled the gun because of shooting pain from a shoulder injury, causing the gun to fire, his lawyer argued. Ferguson’s blood alcohol level was about twice the legal limit for drivers when the shooting happened, a prosecution expert said.

An adult son who was in the home had testified that he had stepped outside as his parents argued and heard his mother say words to the effect, “Why don’t you point a real gun at me?” The son said he turned around and saw his father fire the gun that he kept in an ankle holster.

Ferguson had testified that his wife instead said, “Why don’t you put the real gun away from me?”

Ferguson’s lawyer, Cameron Talley, told reporters after the mistrial was declared that neither Ferguson’s children nor his slain wife’s family members wanted him prosecuted, according to Law360.

“At the end of the day, Judge Ferguson’s life remains in ruins: He’s a broken, 74-year-old man who lost his wife and has health problems,” Talley said.

Talley said he hoped that he could reach a resolution to the case in future discussions with prosecutors.

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said his office is “absolutely prepared to retry this case,” according to Law360.

Spitzer also said his office would be reviewing Ferguson’s cases because he admitted during trial testimony that he was sometimes under the influence of alcohol on the bench.

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A state judge in New York is refusing to throw out the criminal hush-money case against Donald Trump, determining that the U.S. Supreme Court’s sweeping ruling regarding presidential immunity was not applicable to the president-elect’s current case before the court because the actions resulting in his conviction related “entirely to unofficial conduct” from his first tenure in office.

The ruling stems from Trump in May 2024 being convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records in the Empire State. The charges resulted from a $130,000 hush-money payment made by Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen, to adult content creator Stormy Daniels in October 2016.

The highly anticipated ruling from Acting New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan reasoned that Trump’s actions resulted in “overwhelming evidence of guilt” and were not at odds with the high court’s recent ruling granting immense prosecutorial immunity for the “official actions” of a president.

“The People’s use of these acts as evidence of the decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the Executive Branch,” Merchan wrote in the 41-page ruling.

Following the high court’s July ruling, Trump’s attorneys argued that portions of the evidence presented during the former and soon-to-be president’s criminal trial earlier this year was improperly shown to the jury.

The Supreme Court justices ruled that a sitting president is immune from prosecution for any official acts taken while in office and evidence of a president’s official acts cannot be used against a president in a criminal case, even where the underlying conduct is personal in nature.

Trump also claimed more fundamental problems — that evidence of his official acts as president infected the indictment itself because such evidence was presented during the grand jury process. Specifically, Trump argued that the state improperly used a few references to David Pecker, 72, the onetime CEO of the National Enquirer’s parent company American Media Inc., in laying out its case for grand jurors.

However, the argument did not resonate with Merchan, who reasoned that the evidence presented to jurors related to “entirely unofficial conduct” that was not encompassed by the Supreme Court’s ruling.

“This Court concludes that if error occurred regarding the introduction of the challenged evidence, such error was harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt,” Merchan wrote. “Even if this Court did find that the disputed evidence constitutes official acts under the auspices of the Trump decision, which it does not, Defendant’s motion is still denied as introduction of the disputed evidence constitutes harmless error and no mode of proceedings error has taken place.”

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3. Judge allows malicious prosecution claim…

Law Firms

Judge allows malicious prosecution claim in attorney’s countersuit against McElroy Deutsch

By Debra Cassens Weiss

October 2, 2024, 2:48 pm CDT

A lawyer who countersued McElroy, Deutsch, Mulvaney & Carpenter for defamation and retaliation may add a malicious prosecution claim to the action, a New Jersey judge has ruled.

Lawyer Nicole Alexander, McElroy Deutsch’s former director of business and professional development, countersued after the law firm filed a lawsuit against her and her husband, former McElroy Deutsch chief financial officer John Dunlea. MeElroy Deutsch accused the couple of “business-card abuse” and Dunlea of paying himself unauthorized bonuses.

Law360 covered the Sept. 27 decision and spoke with Jeffrey Pollock of Fox Rothschild, who is Alexander’s lawyer.

“It may be great sport for McElroy to destroy a former employee’s life, but this claim was wrongful when it was filed, and it is tortious to maintain it,” Pollock told Law360.

Dunlea pleaded guilty in May to embezzling more than $1.5 million from the firm over a six-year period and failing to pay more than $22,000 in state income taxes. He was sentenced to five years in state prison in July.

Alexander has said she was unaware of wrongdoing. She filed a separate suit arguing that the firm engaged in marital-status discrimination because it fired her based on her marriage to Dunlea. The two cases have been consolidated, Law.com previously reported.

See also:

Former McElroy Deutsch CFO faces criminal charges for alleged $1.5M embezzlement

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3. DA acknowledges unwarranted prosecution of…

Ethics

DA acknowledges unwarranted prosecution of woman for ‘clearly not criminal’ abortion

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 4, 2024, 9:20 am CST

The district attorney in Starr County, Texas, has agreed to a one-year probated suspension for the murder prosecution of a woman who had a self-induced abortion.

The district attorney, Gocha A. Ramirez, oversaw an assistant district attorney who pursued the charge, according to the statement of facts in a Jan. 25 agreed judgment of probated suspension.

The Associated Press and the Texas Tribune covered the agreement last week. The Marshall Project noted the Texas Tribune article.

Ramirez falsely told the chief disciplinary counsel that he was not aware of the assistant district attorney’s actions, according to the stipulated facts. The prosecution was for acts that were “clearly not criminal,” the judgment said.

Ramirez’s office dropped the murder charge after the woman spent two days in a detention center.

At the time of the prosecution, Texas law authorized private citizens to sue for damages if a woman has an abortion after cardiac activity can be detected. Texas later banned nearly all abortions after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, just months after the woman’s prosecution.

In an interview with the Associated Press last week, Ramirez said he “made a mistake” in the abortion case. He agreed to the probated suspension, so his office can keep prosecuting cases, he said. No one else is facing discipline in connection with the incident, Ramirez told the AP.

Ramirez will pay $1,250 for the chief disciplinary counsel’s attorney fees and expenses. The suspension won’t take effect unless Ramirez fails to meet terms and conditions that include refraining from other violations of ethics rules.

A senior prosecutor in the Atlanta area has evidence suggesting Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade began their romantic relationship several years before the embattled pair testified it started, a Monday court filing alleges.

The latest salvo in the monthslong effort to disqualify Willis from the racketeering (RICO) and election interference case she brought against Donald Trump comes in an eleventh-hour motion to reopen the evidence. That motion seeks to subpoena a new witness and was filed by co-defendant David Shafer, the onetime Georgia GOP chairman who prosecutors claim was integral to the fake electors plot.

Shafer’s filing, prepared by attorney Craig Gillen, alleges the new witness will substantiate claims made by Terrence Bradley regarding the timeline of the DA’s relationship with the man she put in charge of the most consequential criminal case in Peach State history. At the same time, the motion also says the new witness will refute a key part of Bradley’s testimony about the nature of his prior claims.

After watching Bradley’s testimony, Co-Chief Deputy District Attorney for Cobb County Cindi Lee Yeager spoke with two defense attorneys on the phone and took issue with many statements made by Nathan Wade’s former divorce attorney and law partner, the filing says.

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3. Child-porn prosecution of Netflix for ‘Cuties’…

Prosecutors

Child-porn prosecution of Netflix for ‘Cuties’ film looks like ‘mosaic’ of bad faith, 5th Circuit says

By Debra Cassens Weiss

December 21, 2023, 9:35 am CST

A federal appeals court has upheld a judge’s preliminary injunction barring a Texas child-pornography prosecution of Netflix for streaming the movie Cuties, agreeing with a Netflix lawyer that the case looks like a “mosaic” of bad faith.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at New Orleans ruled for Netflix in a Dec. 18 opinion by Judge Don R. Willett, an appointee of former President Donald Trump.

Law.com and Law360 have coverage, while How Appealing links to additional articles.

The appeals court described Cuties as “a controversial film starring preteen girls who participate in a dance competition.” According to a description by the Cato Institute, which joined an amicus brief supporting the injunction against prosecution, the message of the film is critical of the influence of social media on the young girls, whose “sexualized routines” copied what they saw online.

In one scene, the girls watch a video on their phones in which a dancer briefly flashes her breast. Netflix said it can verify that the dancer was older than age 18 at the time of filming.

Tyler County, Texas, District Attorney Lucas Babin at first obtained an indictment charging Netflix under an obscenity law that was later struck down as unconstitutional under the First Amendment in a different case. Babin dropped the charge but obtained four new indictments under a law that bans promotion of sexual conduct by a child younger than age 18.

Three of the indictments were based on three different clothed minor girls in the film, and the fourth was related to the actress with the exposed breast.

To obtain the indictment, Netflix alleges, Babin “restricted the grand jury’s view to only those scenes and stills that he [had] personally curated and stripped of their proper context.”

Netflix sued in federal court, seeking an injunction against Babin’s prosecution.

The Younger abstention doctrine, which is named after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1971 decision in Younger v. Harris, is not an impediment, the 5th Circuit said. The doctrine bars federal court interference with state court proceedings, as long as the defendant has an adequate opportunity to raise constitutional challenges in the state forum, Willett explained.

“A state has no legitimate interest, however, in a prosecution brought in bad faith or to harass,” Willett wrote. “Nor, for that matter, does a defendant have an adequate opportunity to assert constitutional violations in the state proceeding when the prosecution itself is the constitutional violation. Thus, in exceptional cases in which a state prosecutor is credibly accused of bad faith and has no reasonable hope of obtaining a valid conviction against the defendant, comity-infused deference gives way, and a federal court may exercise its equitable power to enjoin the prosecution.”

The 5th Circuit said it can’t conclude that a district court erred in enjoining the prosecution “at this preliminary stage and on the fact-intensive record before us.”