Sentencing was delayed until Sept. 9 for the drunk driver who was convicted of killing a Chula Vista man and another passenger after he wrote a handwritten letter to the judge seeking a delay.
The delay for Mario Alberto Carranza, 28, was opposed by Deputy District Attorney Cally Bright as family members of Monica Lupercio, 20, and Carlos Kristopher Vargas, 20, had made an effort to attend the hearing on Aug. 19 in El Cajon Superior Court.
Bright said one relative flew in from Philadelphia. Vargas is from Chula Vista.
It was revealed that Bright and the probation department will be seeking a prison sentence of 30 years to life for Carranza, whom a jury convicted of two counts of second-degree murder on June 30.
Judge Ronald Frazier urged Carranza to talk to the probation department about the case. Carranza declined an interview with the probation department for their sentencing report and Frazier asked a probation official to try and interview him in jail before sentencing on Sept. 9.
His attorney, George Siddell, said in court he had not seen the letter his client had written. He said he would be seeking a concurrent sentence of 15 years to life for the deaths of both passengers in 2014 instead of a consecutive sentence.
Siddell said in trial his client attended special education classes in school and he had described himself as a slow learner. Carranza was convicted of drunk driving in 2007 and attended Mothers Against Drunk Drivers classes as required of his sentence.
Bright said Carranza’s blood/alcohol level was .28 at a hospital after he lost control of his car on Interstate 8 around 7:30 a.m. on April 19, 2014. He drove through a chain link fence and the car overturned in a concrete culvert. The felony limit for drunk driving is .10.
Carranza had driven his two passengers to a party in Alpine the night before. He passed out in the bathtub, but decided to drive them home the next morning but was still under the influence. He remains in jail.
