State of Minnesota, ex rel. Darrell Gene Weyaus, petitioner, Appellant,

This opinion will be unpublished and
may not be cited except as provided by
Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2016).

STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A17-1082

State of Minnesota, ex rel. Darrell Gene Weyaus, petitioner,
Appellant,

vs.

Tom Roy, Commissioner of Corrections,
Respondent.

Filed October 9, 2017
Affirmed
Cleary, Chief Judge

Ramsey County District Court
File No. 62-CV-16-3252

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Jennifer Lauermann, Assistant
Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

Lori Swanson, Attorney General, Bradley D. Simon, Assistant Attorney General, St. Paul,
Minnesota (for respondent)

Considered and decided by Cleary, Chie f Judge; Bjorkman, Judge; and Hooten,
Judge.
U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
CLEARY, Chief Judge
On appeal from the district court’s denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus,
appellant Darrell Gene Weyaus argues that the district court erred in denying his request
to modify his five-year cond itional release term, to begin when he was “released from
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prison” and placed in a work release program outside the correctional facility. We affirm
the district court’s decision.
FACTS
On December 12, 2009, appellant was arrest ed for driving a mo tor vehicle with a
blood alcohol level of 0.23. At the time, he had a history of at least nine prior driving while
impaired (DWI) convictions. Appellant pleaded guilty, and on February 12, 2010, he was
sentenced to 57 months in prison, followed by five years of conditional release. He was
committed to the commissioner of corrections and first c onfined at the Minnesota
Correctional Facility at Lino Lakes.
On July 12, 2012, the department of corrections (DOC) tr ansferred him from a
correctional facility to a work release program at RS-Eden in St. Paul. He remained on
work release status until February 11, 2013, when the DOC placed him on supervised
release and he was allowed to move to his mother’s residence.
The DOC initially calculated appellant’s c onditional release term as expiring on
February 9, 2018. But in 2014, he violated the terms of supervised release and he was
reimprisoned. He was released from prison in 2015. With the additional prison time, the
DOC extended appellant’s conditional release term until November 20, 2018.
On May 23, 2016, appellant filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, seeking to
compel the DOC to recalculate his conditional release term to begin on July 12, 2012, the
day that he was transferred to the work release program at RS-Eden.
In an order filed on May 15 , 2017, the district court denied the petition. In a
supporting memorandum, the court noted that appellant’s interpretation of the phrase
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“released from prison” under Minn. Stat. § 169A.276, subd. 1(d), 1 ignored both the
comprehensive statutory framework and the fa ct that appellant remained a “custodial
inmate while enrolled in the work release program and confined to the RS-Eden facility.”
The court concluded that under the plain meaning of the statute, the commissioner did not
release appellant from prison by extending the privilege of participation in a statutory work
release program at a designated facility.
This appeal follows.
D E C I S I O N
In a published opinion filed to day, we held that an inma te participating in a work
release program authorized by Minn. Stat. § 241.26, has not been released from prison, so
as to begin the five-year conditional rele ase term imposed pursuant to Minn. Stat.
§ 169A.276, subd. 1(d). State ex rel. Huseby v. Roy, A17-1073 (Minn. App. Oct. 9, 2017).
In Huseby, we rejected arguments identical to t hose raised here by appellant. For the
reasons discussed in Huseby, we affirm the district cour t’s order denying appellant’s
petition for a writ of habeas corpus.
Affirmed.

1 Because the relevant statutes discussed have not substantially changed since this offense
occurred, the 2016 Minnesota Statutes will be cited throughout this opinion.