Psychiatrist Testifies in Deputy’s Slaying

Michael Raymond Johnson refused to discuss the shooting of Deputy Peter Aguirre Jr. and asked for a lawyer, but prosecutors kept trying to get a statement out of him as he lay wounded in Ventura County Medical Center, a prosecution psychiatrist testified Tuesday.

Dr. Donald S. Patterson testified that top prosecutors told him Johnson had waived his Miranda rights after the July 17, 1996, shooting of Aguirre, and that Johnson wanted to talk to a psychiatrist.

So Patterson went into the hospital observation room, where doctors were discussing the bullet wounds Johnson had received in a shootout with sheriff’s deputies after the slaying, Patterson testified.

An investigator equipped Patterson with a tape-recorder, and Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Holmes gave Patterson a card listing the Miranda rights of avoiding self-incrimination and on contacting an attorney.

“I was told, when it was appropriate, to read the defendant his Miranda rights and ask him questions,” Patterson testified at a hearing to determine whether Johnson’s alleged confession to Patterson can be used against the defendant at his Nov. 3 trial.

“It was my decision when the defendant was quieted and calmed down that I could go in and talk to him,” Patterson said.

Johnson lay in hospital clothes, handcuffed to a gurney, where doctors and nurses tested him for pain. Patterson testified he had followed as Johnson was wheeled to the X-ray unit, and that when they were alone he read Johnson his rights off the Miranda card.

The doctor testified he told Johnson that he (Patterson) was there for the district attorney’s office and asked if he wanted to talk. “He said, ‘I’d rather talk to a lawyer first,’ ” Patterson said.

Patterson then left and went to the emergency room hallway to tell Holmes that Johnson had refused to waive his Miranda rights and give a statement. “Holmes suggested I go back and stick around to observe the suspect and anything in his behavior or demeanor that might occur,” Patterson said.

A district attorney’s investigator, noticing that the tape had nearly run out in Patterson’s recorder, flipped it over before he went back into the X-ray unit, Patterson testified.

Patterson is expected to continue testifying on the time he spent with Johnson--including a confession Johnson allegedly made to the killing--when the hearing resumes Thursday morning.