Deputy’s Killer Is Delusional, Witnesses Say

Convicted killer Michael Raymond Johnson once suffered from delusions that “nonorganic” meat eaters were trying to control his mind and poison the world, a defense witness testified Friday.

“He had prominent delusions that he belonged to a world of organic eaters who have been forced to go underground to wage a defense against the vast majority of others,” psychiatric social worker Marcia Miller testified, reading from a report she wrote in 1994.

“The nonorganics attempt to poison the food, water, air, etc., by means of multimedia, computers, etc., to brainwash the ‘organics.’ ”

Her testimony bears out another episode from Johnson’s past: He once told a prison psychologist that he robbed a McDonald’s restaurant for the Hindu god Krishna to show people that eating meat is bad, his attorney said.

Miller was the first of three mental health specialists called by Johnson’s defense attorneys in an attempt to show Johnson is mentally ill and does not deserve the death penalty.

Last month the jury convicted Johnson of first-degree murder for killing Ventura County Sheriff’s Deputy Peter J. Aguirre in July 1996 during a domestic disturbance call.

The jury must now decide if Johnson should die or spend the rest of his life in prison. After three days of tearful testimony from Aguirre’s friends and family called by the prosecution, the defense expects to spend about a week trying to persuade the jury to spare his life.

Defense attorney Todd Howeth acknowledged in his opening statement earlier this week that Johnson committed an unforgivable crime.

But, he argued, the 50-year-old Vietnam veteran suffers from mental delusions and paranoid schizophrenia, and thus should not be executed.

Miller, who works for the Ventura County Behavioral Health Center, met Johnson when he sought help in 1994.

She testified that he wanted to clean up his life and stop taking drugs, but that he clearly suffered from “organic delusional disorder.”

“There was evidence of paranoia,” she said.

She said that Johnson had a “prominent delusional belief system,” and believed people could read his mind--both common symptoms of mental disease.

For example, he told her he thought his parents were agents of the “nonorganic” effort to control his mind.

He said he threw away food if his family walked by because he thought they were trying to poison him.

And he believed his son once made him sick to force him to paint his apartment.

During his interview with Miller he said he continued to suffer delusions even while he was incarcerated for three years--and off the drugs that have been part of his life since he was a teenager.

The defense witnesses--all three from the Ventura County Behavioral Health Center--said Johnson worked hard to turn himself around--getting sober, cleaning up his disheveled appearance, and biking uphill from Ventura to Ojai for regular alcohol and drug rehabilitation meetings.

Lisa Kus, a senior psychologist with the county center, said that interviews with Johnson convinced her he needed anti-psychotic medication. She referred him to a doctor.

And Kus gave another example of Johnson’s paranoid behavior. “He mentioned that his brother was mugged, reportedly by a gang member,” Kus testified, referring to a prior hit-and-run incident. “After that he saw someone in gang-like attire, and he attempted to run that person down with a car.”

“Where is the delusion?” Deputy Dist. Atty. Maeve Fox asked in her cross-examination, trying to show Johnson’s fear of gang members was not completely irrational.

“It’s a leap,” Kus said. “Many people wear gang-type attire. It’s the fashion.”

Jurors scribbled as the experts spoke, and Johnson, seated at the defense table, looked more alert than he has any day of the trial so far.

He leaned forward to hear the testimony, listened attentively to Fox’s cross-examination, and peered over his attorney’s shoulder to read an old psychiatric report.

He even smiled weakly at his mother as he was led out of the courtroom at the end of the morning.

On Monday, defense attorneys will call two officers who served with Johnson in Vietnam, and show a home movie that one of them filmed there.