Murder Defendant’s Wife Protests on the Stand

Launching into an angry and tearful tirade, the estranged wife of accused killer Michael Johnson took the witness stand in his murder trial Tuesday and refused to answer prosecutors’ questions about their 12-year marriage.

“Everybody is doing tricks here,” she cried in protest. “Why don’t they speak the truth?”

The outburst by the wife, who as an alleged crime victim can be forced to take the stand against her husband, occurred outside the presence of the jury.

Superior Court Judge Steven Z. Perren wanted to explain a few courtroom ground rules to the witness before the jury was brought in, and she responded by asking the judge if she could make a statement.

Speaking in Spanish that was translated by a court interpreter, she said her husband should be set free. Between sobs, she accused prosecutors--and then the judge--of playing “tricks” on her.

“There may be some things that you wish to say that you may passionately feel that have no place in this courtroom,” Perren responded. He told her that she must answer the district attorney’s questions.

“My job,” he said in response to her accusations, “is to ensure that there are no tricks.” And with that final remark, Perren ordered the jury brought into the courtroom.

But the wife, who prosecutors say was kidnapped and raped by Johnson just hours before he allegedly killed a Ventura County sheriff’s deputy on July 17, 1996, was uncooperative and refused to answer the first several questions posed by Deputy Dist. Atty. Maeve Fox.

Perren sent the jury out of the courtroom and again turned to the witness, whose name is being withheld by The Times because she is the victim of an alleged rape.

“It is not my job to encourage you to testify,” Perren told her. “May I suggest to you in the strongest terms that should you proceed to testify in the way you have begun, you will accomplish the exact opposite of what your heart’s desire may be.”

Perren brought the jury back into the courtroom and read a series of instructions about witness testimony, including how a jury should consider such issues as the credibility of a witness as well as possible bias or motive.

As he spoke, the wife sat quietly on the witness stand, her chin dropped and tucked toward the shoulder of a bright-pink dress. She wore a pearl necklace and her hair was pulled away from her face, which was puffy from crying and showed her obvious unhappiness.

It was in the living room of her Meiners Oaks home that Deputy Peter Aguirre Jr. was fatally shot after officers responded to a domestic dispute.

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The woman’s daughter from a previous relationship had called police after her mother told her to leave the house because Johnson was carrying two guns and acting erratically, according to testimony from the preliminary hearing.

During those proceedings, the distraught and emotional wife, a native of Mexico who gained legal residency through her marriage, told a judge that the marriage was one of convenience and was consummated only months before the slaying.

But on Tuesday, when the prosecutor resumed questioning, the wife testified that she married Johnson because she loved him. Fox challenged that statement, citing the woman’s prior testimony.

“It’s a trick, I never said that,” the wife said of her earlier statements. “I don’t want any tricks.”

Fox continued to question the wife about the marriage, and eventually the witness relented.

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She said she and Johnson married in 1985 but did not see each other for 10 years. In 1995, they met at a fast-food restaurant to sign some papers and then began a romantic relationship, she testified.

But when Fox began to ask more detailed questions about that relationship, such as the location of a place in the hills above Ojai where the witness and defendant would sometimes have sex by a stream, the wife again refused to answer.

“I don’t want personal questions being asked,” she said.

“I apologize, but I have to ask you those questions,” Fox responded.

“Those questions you are asking me don’t have anything to do with the case,” the witness protested, at which point Perren intervened.

“Actually, I am the one who has to decide that,” he said. “Please answer the question.”

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The wife said she and Johnson went to their hideaway by the stream three days before the slaying to make love. Embarrassed and uneasy, she reluctantly told the jury that as they undressed she told Johnson that she used to go there with a former lover.

“He got mad,” she testified.

The next day, the wife said, Johnson took what few belongings he kept at her house and left. Johnson maintained a residence in Ventura but for several weeks had been spending his nights with his wife, according to court testimony.

A day or two before the shooting, the wife said that she and Johnson spoke on the telephone. During their conversation, the defendant made a series of hurtful statements, telling her that she “was nothing” and “not good enough for him,” she testified.

At that point, the judge recessed the proceeding for the day and ordered the witness to return today for further questioning.

After the jury left the courtroom, the wife turned to court interpreter Cecilia Issac and made an unusual request--staring across the courtroom at her husband, who was dressed in a gray suit and flanked by four deputies.

“Your honor,” Issac said, “the witness is requesting the interpreter to ask the judge to let her approach the defendant and touch him.”

Perren refused.

In earlier testimony Tuesday, a firearms expert testified about the flight path of bullets fired inside and outside the wife’s home.

Jim Roberts told the jury that based on the location of spent shell casings and the entry and exit angles of bullet holes, he could determine approximately where Johnson fired a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun.

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In his opinion, he told the jury, one shot was fired at close range at the head of the fallen police officer. Roberts said the bullet went through Aguirre’s head, the carpet, the floor pad and the floor of the house itself before lodging in the dirt beneath the home.

Using a metal rod to indicate the direction of the bullet, Roberts testified that the gun that fired that bullet would have to have been pointed in downward and at a slight angle.

He also testified that based on gunpowder residue, the weapon was fired between 12 and 18 inches from Aguirre’s head.

Prosecutors say Johnson burst from a shower firing three shots at the deputy. They say the defendant then walked over to the fallen officer and fired again.

Defense attorneys, however, say their client is legally blind without his glasses and could not have seen at whom he was shooting.