Suspect Is Formally Charged in Slaying of Officer : Courts: Schoolteacher Daniel Tuffree is eligible for the death penalty. His arraignment is delayed.

The high school teacher accused of killing a Simi Valley police officer was charged Tuesday with capital murder and six other counts of attempted murder and assault for last week’s shootout at his home.

The charges make Daniel Allen Tuffree, 48, eligible for the death penalty.

Tuffree appeared in Ventura County Municipal Court briefly Tuesday but did not enter a plea. A judge delayed Tuffree’s arraignment until Aug. 22.

During Tuffree’s five-minute appearance, Municipal Court Judge John E. Dobroth also agreed to hold the Los Angeles County social studies teacher in jail without bail. Tuffree, ankles and wrists manacled, did not speak during the hearing.

Instead, his court-appointed attorney, Jean Farley, asked Dobroth for the delay because she said attorneys needed more time to talk to Tuffree and investigate the case.

As she spoke, a row of attorneys from the public defender’s office shielded Tuffree from the gallery and phalanx of cameras pointed his way. For security reasons, he was brought only to the doorway of the court’s holding cell, where two bailiffs flanked Tuffree’s 5-foot, 9-inch frame.

With his shoulders sagged and his head hung low, only his mussed and greasy salt-and-pepper hair was visible above the attorneys’ shoulders. Sporting a black mustache and thick, black-rimmed glasses, Tuffree kept his eyes focused on the floor during the hearing. He appeared dazed and was unkempt and unshaven, with gray-and-black beard stubble poking from his face.

Tuffree is accused of fatally shooting Michael Frederick Clark, 28, while firing at two other Simi Valley police officers who went to his Aztec Court home Friday afternoon. The officers had received a telephone call warning that Tuffree was suicidal.

Clark’s father, aunt and uncle sat in the courtroom’s front row Tuesday.

“I don’t really know everything that is going on,” said his father, Frederick Clark, who said he will move from his Colorado home to Simi Valley because of the shooting.

Officer Michael Clark leaves behind a wife and 5-month-old son. The Ventura County coroner said Clark died of a gunshot wound to the back.

The murder of a police officer makes Tuffree eligible for the death penalty, but prosecutors said they have not determined if they will seek to send him to Death Row at San Quentin.

However, the district attorney’s top death-penalty lawyer, Peter D. Kossoris, has been assigned to the case. Kossoris has prosecuted six death penalty trials since 1979, succeeding four times. His last case was Mark Scott Thornton, who was sentenced to die in May for kidnaping and killing a Westlake nurse.

“We haven’t made a decision” to seek the death penalty for Tuffree, Kossoris said outside the courtroom.

Tuffree taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District since 1986 and was assigned to teach at Van Nuys High School next month.

Investigators have not said what could have motivated Tuffree into a shootout with three Simi Valley police officers Friday afternoon. Police shot Tuffree several times during the gunfight and he holed up in his home for hours after the shooting.

None of Tuffree’s wounds were serious, and he walked into court without help Tuesday. Ventura County Sheriff’s Lt. Lance Young said Tuffree is still housed in the jail’s infirmary and is listed in good condition.

The shootout occurred at the three-bedroom house Tuffree kept after divorcing his wife of 23 years in 1989, court records show. Tuffree agreed to pay Susan Lyn Tuffree half the house’s fair market value, less 4%, as of 1990, and she also kept the couple’s 1988 Chevrolet Spectrum.

The Ventura County tax collector appraised the 1,616-square-foot house at $139,577 last year and still lists Susan Tuffree as a co-owner.

Simi Valley police sources said they arrested Tuffree at his home two years ago on suspicion of shooting at a passing pickup truck. But Tuffree was let go and his .40-caliber Glock returned to him because the district attorney’s office deemed the case too weak to take to trial, the source said.

The source said the same gun was used to shoot Clark.

The charges were raised in an unsigned letter addressed to Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury.

“I have personal knowledge of this case and know that charges should have been filed against this violent madman,” stated the writer, identified only as a Simi Valley Police Department employee. “The rank and file of the Simi Valley Police Department will not forget this. . . . I know I speak for many Simi Valley employees when I say that we are thoroughly disappointed in your office.”

Bradbury and his top prosecutors declined to discuss the letter or Tuffree’s earlier run-in with the law.

“Basically, we’re not going to be responding to anonymous letters,” Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin J. McGee said.

Staff writer Mack Reed contributed to this report.

* FUNERAL TODAY

Most of the Simi police force will attend the services. B4