TPHS student convicted of drunk driving speaks out

By Marsha Sutton

Alex Capozza (Photo taken a few years ago) Photo/David Buccigrossi

In his first public statement since being sentenced for driving under the influence of alcohol and gross vehicular manslaughter in connection with the death of fellow student Alex Capozza, a former Torrey Pines High School student said not a day goes by when “I don’t think about Alex and his family.”
In a clear, steady voice, Branden delivered about an eight-minute speech to students participating in the ninth annual Youth in Court Day on March 5 in the North County Courthouse in Vista.
The nationally recognized San Diego Superior Court outreach event brought together about 900 senior high school students from several North County high schools for a full day of rotating lectures and educational sessions.
Branden’s presentation, one of many that day, was titled “Drunken Driving Disaster.” It was held in the courtroom of Judge Joan P. Weber, who ordered that Branden’s last name be withheld, even though he is now 18 and no longer a minor.
Weber’s courtroom was packed with about 100 students who sat in rapt attention, listening carefully as Branden told his first-person account of what happened last year on the night of Oct. 3 that led up to the car crash that killed his friend on a dark stretch of narrow, winding road in Rancho Santa Fe.
“I’m here today to tell a story that changed my life,” Branden began. “I’m not here to be a mom or a dad, to preach or lecture you about drinking and driving. I’m here to tell you my story.”
Branden described an idyllic life – a well-liked lacrosse player with many friends who attended a good high school and was making plans for college.
“Honestly, I had everything a teenager could ask for,” he said. “My future looked bright. It was my senior year and I had everything going for me. With one bad decision, I lost it all.”
In the early morning hours of Oct. 4, Branden said he and four friends left a party where he had been consuming alcohol, in search of food.
“I was the driver – the worst decision I ever made and will ever make in my life,” he said. “We got two miles away from the house when I crashed and flipped my car. My good friend died that night at the scene of the accident, and another friend was seriously injured. I still cannot get that night out of my head.”
Branden told his audience that he takes “full responsibility for what happened that night. When you agree to drive, you are responsible for the safety of everyone in the car. I can’t go back and change the past, but hopefully by talking to you guys today I can change lives in the future.”
Branden described his time in custody, first in the Kearny Mesa juvenile hall detention facility. “There, I was stripped of all my belongings and issued county clothing,” he said. “I was given a faded orange-colored shirt, mismatched socks with holes, blue sweat pants and a tan pair of underwear that used to be white.”
In a maximum security unit, Branden was surrounded by hardened criminals. “When I walked into the unit, I was stared down by everyone,” he said. “I was the only white kid. I was called white boy and teased about being fresh meat.”
He said the first months were the worst. “I was scared, lonely and depressed,” he said. “I could not stop thinking about my friend and his family. I’ve never cried so much in my entire life. I had and still have nothing. I have no cell phone, computer, personal belongings of any type … and no friends.”
After sentencing, Branden said he “was cuffed by my wrists and shackled by my ankles and taken to Camp Barrett. They called it ‘Camp’ Barrett so the juvenile jail system doesn’t sound so terrible.”
He described Camp Barrett as a jail “surrounded by 20-foot-tall razor-wire fences with a total of 20 officers patrolling 150 detainees 24/7. In jail, you have zero privacy. You are being watched by an officer and camera when you eat, sleep, go to school, use the restroom and even take a shower. I feel as if I’m a controlled robot. … I am told when to go to bed, eat, talk, brush my teeth, use the restroom, take a three-minute shower …”
Branden said if he does anything he’s not specifically told to do, gets into a fight or tries to defend himself, he can receive a rule violation which would add more time to his sentence.
Other juveniles at Camp Barrett, he said, either dropped out of school or have never attended school. He is allowed to see his parents and grandparents on Sundays, but no one else may visit, including his two younger brothers.
“My life has changed dramatically,” he said. “Through my incarceration, I have realized what I took for granted. Every day I wake up on my small little bunk and I thank God for giving me a second chance at life.
“I want to do everything possible to make myself a better person. Although my life has been currently put on hold, I want to further my education, go to college and one day become a firefighter.”
Branden told the students, who sat riveted in their seats, that they had choices in their lives. “I have no choices to make because of the one tragically horrible decision I made to drink and drive,” he said. “My life is completely controlled. After my speech, I’ll be going back to jail.”
He asked the students to “think about the decisions you’re going to make, what affects your life and the lives of others forever” the next time they decide to go out with friends.
“I feel terrible for what I have done,” he said. “I’ll be paying for the consequences of drinking and driving, and killing my friend, for the rest of my life.”
Questions from listeners
After Branden’s speech, he took questions from listeners, one of whom asked if he had contacted the Capozza family.
“I wrote a letter to them a couple of weeks after I was put in jail, and I talked about how I felt,” he said. “I would like their forgiveness, but I would never expect it ever for what I’ve done to them.” He said he has not heard back from them.
Branden admitted to driving drunk before, twice he said, the judge noting that not being caught adds to a sense of invincibility.
“I thought that,” he said. “I never thought it could be me. I never thought I’d be the one.”
Branden discussed the impact on his family, saying his parents were supportive and “always there” for him. “But … I’ll always be sorry and regretful,” he said. “I feel terrible for what I’ve made them go through.”
He said he misses freedom and “being able to wake up in the morning and put on my own clothes and not someone else’s. And not being able to see my parents when I wake up every morning. Or tell my brothers that I love them.”
In jail and alone, “you have to grow up way faster than you’d ever want to,” he said.
When a questioner asked if anyone else in the car was in a better position to drive, he replied, “I was the most sober, but there’s no such thing as the ‘most’ sober.”
Branden said he hears from Torrey Pines friends. “They write me letters all the time, and there hasn’t been that much going on,” he said. “But I know they don’t want to be telling me all. If they’re having fun, they don’t want to make me feel bad because I’m not there. So I’m not 100 percent on the details about everything that they do.”
When Judge Weber asked if he thought his case had an impact on his friends’ behavior regarding drinking and driving, he said, “I think my case had a huge impact.”
Branden said traditional drug and alcohol awareness presentations given at high schools are not very effective.
“The presentations I went to in high school were like the D.A.R.E. programs where they hand out red things that say, ‘Just say no,’” he said. “As a high school student, I think it just goes in one ear and out the other.”
He said a program that featured a teen jailed for drunk driving would have a significantly greater impact, which is why he said he was there to speak to kids. “I would hope that by giving my story, it would help them understand,” he said.
The attorneys speak
The drunken driving presentation began with San Diego County Deputy District Attorney Aimee McLeod, who displayed photographs of the car after the crash and provided details of the circumstances of the disaster.
McLeod described a youth who made many bad choices that night, including drinking in excess, choosing to drive, taking friends with him, speeding on a dangerous road and violating curfew.
McLeod was the prosecuting attorney in Branden’s case, which ended with his incarceration at Camp Barrett Youth Correctional Center in Alpine for 547 days, the maximum allowed. He is scheduled to reappear in court Dec. 9, one year after sentencing, for possible early release.
Branden was 17 at the time of the offense and was charged as a juvenile. Had he been 18 or older, he would have been tried as an adult and could have faced up to 10 years in state prison, she said.
“Part of my job as a prosecutor is to keep the rest of society safe,” McLeod said, adding that it was “lucky that no other car was on the road that night.”
She told the students that the most difficult part of her job is facing the parents of kids who have been involved in drunk-driving incidents. “The hard part was talking to Alex’s parents,” McLeod said. “His parents were devastated.”
Robert Grimes, Branden’s defense attorney, also spoke to the students, saying drunk driving is a crime that “turns a solid citizen into a felon in a split second.” He said the people usually injured or killed by drunk drivers are friends or family members in the car.
Prosecutor McLeod said the word “preventable” sums up the tragedy. “It didn’t have to happen; it doesn’t have to happen again,” she said. “Every single one of you in this room has choices you can make.
“I don’t want a case coming across my desk that has any of you in it as a driver of a car or as a victim. And I don’t want to look at your parents and talk to them about you not coming home.”