Jurors Weep as Mother of Slain Deputy Recounts Loss

In testimony so heart-wrenching a judge had to temporarily send weeping jurors from the courtroom, the mother of slain Sheriff’s Deputy Peter J. Aguirre took the stand Thursday to tell what it was like to lose her first-born son.

Called to testify on behalf of the entire Aguirre family, Marie Aguirre told the jurors what “Little Pete” Aguirre was like as a child, a young man and an adult.

She told them how quiet and obedient he was.

She told them how proud she was when he graduated from college, because he was the first on both sides of the family to do so.

Then, forcing herself to talk through tears, she told the rapt courtroom about July 17, 1996--the day Michael Raymond Johnson shot her son to death when he responded to a domestic disturbance call.

“All I can remember is that my pain was so big,” Marie Aguirre said, sobbing. “I couldn’t get near my husband. I was just hitting myself and hitting myself. And the deputy said, ‘Hit me if you want to hit someone.’ And I remember crying to God for mercy.”

At that point, with more than half the jurors dabbing their eyes, Judge Steven Z. Perren called a break.

The sniffling jurors left the room through the back door, and Marie Aguirre left through the front, where she collapsed into the arms of weeping relatives.

Jurors will weigh Marie Aguirre’s testimony when they decide whether to sentence Johnson to death or life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Aguirre, 26, was gunned down while responding to a call at the home of Johnson’s estranged wife in Meiners Oaks.

Last month, the jury deliberated for only a day before finding the 50-year-old Vietnam veteran guilty of first-degree murder.

In opening arguments in the penalty phase earlier this week, defense attorney Todd Howeth acknowledged that what Johnson did was wrong.

But during this phase of the trial, he will present evidence to show that Johnson has suffered from paranoid schizophrenia for years and thus does not deserve to die.

In the third day of testimony from those affected by Aguirre’s death, Deputy Dist. Atty. Matt Hardy asked Marie Aguirre to describe seeing her son alive for the last time. Then he asked her to describe seeing his dead body.

Aguirre said that hospital workers had cleaned her son up, but his teeth were still covered with blood, his head was wrapped in a turban and his chest was extremely swollen.

“If you could, tell us the effect this has had on your family,” Hardy asked.

“I worked three jobs. I didn’t clean for a year. I didn’t want to go home,” she told the jury. “My husband was totally different. He sat and stared at walls. He didn’t sleep for nights and nights.”

And she said she completely neglected her youngest daughter, who has grown up too fast with no one to help.

Family members and sheriff’s deputies crowded the courtroom Thursday afternoon, with Ventura County Sheriff Larry Carpenter in the front row.

Johnson, seated at the defense table in a dark suit with his hair neatly trimmed, sat still during the tearful testimony, his pale face impassive.

Perren warned the jurors not to allow the powerful emotional testimony to control reason.

The afternoon concluded with a short video Aguirre shot of himself playing at home with his little daughter Gabriela.

The defense will begin calling witnesses this morning.