Sheriff Will Ask for Death Penalty in Deputy’s Slaying

The day after a sheriff’s deputy was slain while intervening in a domestic dispute near Ojai, Ventura County Sheriff Larry Carpenter said he will ask prosecutors to seek the death penalty against the accused killer--a repeat criminal who allegedly ran naked from his house firing at officers with two semiautomatic handguns.

Carpenter said his department would be reviewing training procedures in the wake of the fatal shooting. Though Carpenter said he saw no procedural errors in the case, police experts said Thursday that the slain rookie patrolman made a tactical error by walking into the suspect’s home alone and with his gun in its holster.

The sheriff directed most of his comments Thursday to his hope that prosecutors will deal harshly with Michael Raymond Johnson, 48.

“I want the death penalty,” Carpenter said after praising rookie patrol Officer Peter John Aguirre, 26, a former divinity student who died Wednesday evening.

Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury said prosecutors will file first-degree murder charges with a special circumstance against Johnson, which would make a death sentence possible if he is convicted. Bradbury said he had not decided whether to seek the death penalty.

Carpenter would not detail Johnson’s criminal history, which extends into Georgia and Missouri, but sources said the suspect was convicted of theft in 1968 and has been sentenced to state and federal prisons for narcotics, burglary, robbery and firearm violations.