Alleged Confession Focus of Hearing

After Sheriff’s Deputy Peter Aguirre was shot to death in a domestic dispute last summer in Meiners Oaks, Michael Raymond Johnson allegedly confessed to the slaying in one of two ways, according to arguments heard Monday in court.

Prosecutors said that Johnson was reluctant at first but later made a conscious, well-informed choice to describe details of the shooting for a psychiatrist in the Ojai Valley Hospital emergency room.

But Johnson’s attorneys contended that his Miranda rights were violated by investigators who wore him down.

They argued that detectives and Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury kept returning to question the naked and wounded Johnson, and that investigators sent in a psychiatrist to quiz the suspect even after he said he would prefer to talk to his lawyer first.

In a tape of the hospital interview played Monday in court, Sheriff’s Det. Robert Young can clearly be heard reading Johnson his Miranda rights.

Young can be heard--over the emergency room chatter of doctors and nurses--warning Johnson that anything he says can be used against him in court and that he has the right to an attorney.

But at issue is whether Johnson clearly refused to answer questions at first, whether he knowingly waived those rights when he talked to a psychiatrist about the shooting, and whether the jury in his Nov. 3 murder trial should hear the resulting alleged confession.

“Miranda is not a right, it’s not a constitutional right,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Matt Hardy argued as Monday’s hearing began. “It is a prophylactic rule designed to protect the right against self-incrimination, to be able to cut off questions so that no coercive atmosphere can be created.”

But case law shows that a suspect who invokes his Miranda rights by refusing to answer questions cannot create a situation where the questioning must stop, Hardy said.

“Mr. Johnson jerked us around, and we let him, because that’s what the Constitution allows him to do,” Hardy said. But investigators also brought in the psychiatrist at Johnson’s request when he mentioned he had been treated for mental problems, Hardy said.

But Deputy Public Defender Todd Howeth countered, “We disagree with the district attorney’s supposition that there were mixed messages sent by the defendant.”

“We anticipate the evidence will show that, every step of the way, the D.A. knew the defendant had invoked his rights, and they never attempted to clarify whether he invoked his right to counsel,” Howeth said. “In this case, the defendant clearly and unequivocally invoked his rights several times.”

Det. Young took the stand, testifying that he went in to visit Johnson in the emergency room twice on the night of July 17, 1996, and that Johnson twice declined to talk, although he said he might want to give a statement later.

He played a tape of the interviews, as Aguirre’s widow followed along on a transcript and Johnson’s mother listened intently.

At one point, Young tells Johnson he wants to hear about the shooting at his wife’s house on Encinal Street, then reads him his Miranda rights in a clear voice.

“Do you understand?” Young asks.

“Yes,” Johnson replies.

“[Would] you like to talk to me about what happened out there on Encinal Street?”

“No.”

Young goes in again later, but Johnson again refuses to talk, saying he would rather talk to a lawyer.

Young left but angrily returned to Johnson’s hospital gurney a third time, he testified.

“I told Mr. Johnson that he had not just shot a uniform or a representative of the establishment,” Young said. “He’d killed a living, productive human being unlike himself, that the deputy he had killed was named Peter Aguirre, that he was 26 years old and that he had a wife and child.

“And I wanted him to remember Peter Aguirre for every minute of every day for the rest of his life.”

Young said Johnson replied sarcastically, “Detective, I sense a little anger.”

Young, Bradbury and the psychiatrist are expected to testify in the hearing, which could stretch to Thursday.

The defense team also plans to ask the judge to remove the death penalty from the trial, quash a subpoena that seeks to open Johnson’s private prison and Army psychiatric records and restrict a laundry list of other evidence in the case.