State v. Retzlaff

OPINION

ROSS, Judge.

This appeal requires us to decide whether a repeat drunk driver may avoid conviction as a first-degree offender on what-as he put it-might be “a simple loophole” in the impaired-driving law. In 2006 the legislature bolstered the impaired-driving law so that a person commits first-degree driving while impaired by driving drunk with a previous conviction for substantially injuring another person while driving impaired. Jerry Retzlaff was convicted of criminal vehicular operation in 2000 for substantially injuring another person while driving impaired, and he was charged with…