Defense Argues Against Death Penalty in Deputy Slaying

Attorneys for accused killer Michael Raymond Johnson argued Monday that the one-time drug counselor should not face the death penalty for fatally shooting a sheriff’s deputy in July, because a delusional jealousy dictated his homicidal behavior.

“This is not a capital case,” Deputy Public Defender Todd Howeth maintained in an opening statement at Johnson’s preliminary hearing. “The shooting was a direct result of Mr. Johnson’s mental illness.”

Howeth also argued that a series of mistakes by Ventura County sheriff’s deputies and investigators before and after Johnson shot Deputy Peter Aguirre Jr., 26, at a Meiners Oaks house contributed to the tragedy and violated Johnson’s constitutional rights.

Howeth told Municipal Judge Edward F. Brodie that he will demonstrate that Johnson should not face the death penalty because neither of the two special circumstances alleged by prosecutors existed.

Johnson, 49, is eligible for the death penalty if convicted because his primary victim was a law enforcement officer and because he committed the shooting after allegedly kidnapping his estranged wife from her job as a maid in an Ojai home.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Frawley said the defense team is simply testing the courtroom waters with meritless arguments.

“It’s a buckshot defense,” he said in an interview. “They just spread a lot of things and hope that something sticks.”

However, in his four-tier attack on the prosecution’s case, Howeth argued that Aguirre was not legally acting as a police officer when the deputy stepped inside the Johnson house shortly before he was killed because he did not knock and declare who he was before entering.

Second, the defense lawyer said that Johnson never kidnapped his wife, Guillermina Alonso, and that she suggested they leave her employer’s home and take a drive.

Third, Howeth insisted that investigators--and a psychiatrist sent by the district attorney--all elicited incriminating statements in the hospital from a wounded, weak and confused Johnson after he had declined comment and asked for an attorney.

And underlying the entire case, Howeth said, is the fact that Johnson--a delusional recovering drug addict haunted by demons of the Vietnam War--was acting “crazy” on July 17.

“He says [to Alonso], ‘The movie has begun. We’re in a movie,’ ” Howeth said. “He exhibits crazy behavior. . . . He said he has to be with her all the time.”

Overwhelmed with jealousy and armed with a gun, prosecutors allege that Johnson, who had worked as a volunteer counselor at a Ventura halfway house, kidnapped Alonso from her employer’s house, raped her on a nearby hillside, and then drove to her home, where he placed two handguns on a bathroom sill as he showered with his wife.

Defense attorneys acknowledge that Johnson shot Aguirre three times and killed him. And numerous witnesses support the prosecution’s charge that Johnson ran naked from the house and fired two handguns about 10 more times at another deputy, before the suspect was shot in the chest.

Frawley said the facts are so damning that to establish the required probable cause that a crime was committed he will call only Alonso, two or three other witnesses to testify about her alleged kidnap and rape, and Mike Barnes, the district attorney’s investigator, who spent hours on the stand Monday recounting key prosecution evidence.

But in what promises to be a rare all-out defense before the case goes to Superior Court trial, Howeth said he may put on 30 witnesses once the prosecution finishes its brief presentation.

The lawyer said the tragedy might have been avoided if Aguirre and three assisting deputies had been fully alerted by a dispatcher to the threat posed by Johnson. Instead, they were told that a domestic dispute was in progress, and that two guns were in the house.

“They’re dispatched on what they believe to be a routine call,” he said. And that is probably why Aguirre entered Alonso’s house with his gun in his holster, only to be quickly shot, the lawyer said.

Howeth also argued that Aguirre’s entry was illegal, because he never identified himself to Johnson, and Johnson did not invite him in. In response, Frawley said Johnson did not live in the house, an emergency was underway and that Alonso had invited Aguirre into her home.

Howeth also disagreed with prosecution descriptions of the killing as “execution style,” and maintained that the defendant, who has 20-400 vision, without his glasses could not see he was shooting at a deputy. But Frawley offered evidence that Johnson shot the deputy from 6 to 24 inches away through the side of his head.

The defense will also try to preclude from evidence incriminating statements Johnson made to a series of interviewers in the hours after he was wounded--first at Ojai Valley Hospital and then at Ventura County Medical Center in Ventura.

Howeth said no one called an attorney for Johnson, despite repeated requests all evening long--a violation of his constitutional rights.

Johnson’s most damaging admission was to psychiatrist Donald Patterson that he kidnapped his wife and that he knew what was going on during his shootout with deputies, Frawley said.

“It’s there in his own words,” Frawley said.

As far as the conditions under which Johnson made statements to authorities: “Everything’s on tape, so all the judge has to do is listen and see this guy talked willingly,” the prosecutor said.