JUDGE REFUSES TO EXCLUDE CONFESSION; SUSPECT IN DEPUTY'S SLAYING DEEMED TO HAVE WAIVED RIGHT TO SILENCE.

Byline: Jesse Hiestand / Daily News Staff Writer

A Ventura Superior Court judge has refused to throw out the confession of a Meiners Oaks man facing trial in the killing of a sheriff's deputy, saying the defendant waived his right to remain silent before volunteering the incriminating information.

Defense attorneys had asked Judge Steven Z. Perren to suppress the confession of Michael Johnson, the suspect in the slaying of sheriff's Deputy Peter Aguirre, who was shot to death last year.

Perren, after hearing eight days of testimony, concluded Monday that Johnson was not coerced or pressured into talking with Dr. Donald Patterson, a forensic psychiatrist hired by the District Attorney's Office.

``I find as a fact that the defendant for whatever reason . . . initiated the conversation, controlled the conversation, directed the conversation and took it to places he wished it to go,'' Perren said.

According to Deputy District Attorney Matt Hardy, the defendant had been advised or reminded of his right to remain silent on four separate occasions in the hours following the shooting.

``The defendant knew his rights and the consequences of talking to Dr. Patterson,'' he said.

Aguirre was shot while responding to a domestic violence call at Johnson's Meiners Oaks home July 17, 1996. The defendant also sustained a gunshot wound during the shootout.

Johnson was being treated at a hospital when investigators had Patterson, wearing a concealed tape recorder, talk to the defendant early the next morning. After being read his rights, Johnson told the doctor he did not want to make a statement and wanted to see an attorney.

But prosecution investigators encouraged Patterson to hang around Johnson's hospital room as he was being readied for surgery. At one point when they were alone, the defendant struck up a conversation and asked the doctor, ``You want to talk about it?''

Prosecutors consider the resulting conversation a confession and plan to use it at Johnson's jury trial in early November.

Deputy Public Defender Todd Howeth sought to suppress the confession on grounds the defendant never expressly waived his right to remain silent.

He suggested the doctor engaged in both deception and illegal questioning to solicit the incriminating information as Johnson lay in a vulnerable state - naked and handcuffed to a hospital gurney.

In making his ruling, Perren said the defendant had clearly invoked his right to remain silent the first time he did so.

He also said it was not improper for Ventura County District Attorney Michael D. Bradbury to personally remind the defendant of those rights in the hospital.

But while Perren questioned the methods by which prosecutors obtained the statement, he said Patterson had been forthcoming with the defendant about his identity and the reason he was there.

What it all came down to, Perren said, was Johnson's willingness to talk to the psychiatrist even though he had stated, ``I'm sure my lawyer wouldn't appreciate it.''

``(Johnson) knew what was going on, what use (the statements) would be put to and who he was talking to,'' Perren said.