A former Yukoner has been sentenced to eight months behind bars after being found guilty of impaired driving during a rollover that paralyzed one friend and severely injured the other.

Michael Schmidt was found guilty of two counts of impaired driving causing bodily harm following a trial last October.

He was acquitted of two counts of dangerous driving causing bodily harm and two counts of driving with a blood alcohol concentration over 0.08.

In Yukon Supreme Court Monday afternoon, Justice Ron Veale sentenced Schmidt to eight months for causing bodily harm to Jessica Frotten and six months for causing bodily harm to Michael Sanderson.

The 30-year-old will serve the two sentences concurrently making his total jail time eight months.

Schmidt, who now lives in Victoria, was also prohibited from driving for three years.

On Dec. 14, 2009, Schmidt was driving north on the Alaska Highway toward Haines Junction with Frotten and Sanderson he rolled his Honda. Both passengers were ejected.

The distance from the start of his skid mark on the highway to the car's resting place was approximately 180 metres.

The vehicle was airborne for some of that distance.

Frotten, then 21, suffered a broken back, a torn aorta, broken feet, punctured lungs, several broken ribs and a concussion.

She spent several weeks in a medically-induced coma at an Edmonton hospital and is now a paraplegic.

Sanderson, then 29, broke his right shoulder, left leg, multiple ribs and tore the ligaments in his left knee.

Today, Frotten lives in Saskatchewan, where she undergoes intense and costly physiotherapy.

Schmidt has admitted to driving at 110 to 113 km/h at the time of the crash.

Much of the trial centred around how much he had to drink leading up to the collision.

He admitted to sharing a pitcher of beer with his friends over lunch and later testified to having had samples of beer at the Yukon Brewery shortly before the crash.

When he was given a breathalyzer test three hours following the rollover, Schmidt's blood alcohol concentration was 0.07. The legal limit is 0.08.

"While Mr. Schmidt's degree of impairment may be described as relatively slight, the consequences of his impaired driving were anything but slight,” Veale said Monday.

The judge echoed the concerns of a probation officer who interviewed Schmidt as part of a pre-sentencing report. The official said Schmidt was minimizing the role alcohol had to play in the rollover.

Schmidt "accepts responsibility for the accident but is skeptical of the alcohol impairment aspect and attempts to justify his decision to drive,” the report said.

"The justification he uses is that he did not buy the alcohol and that he ate a large meal with the drinks.

"He states that ‘it is the opinion of the scientific community at large that food slows the absorption of alcohol.'”

Schmidt believes that although the toxicologist mentioned this in court, it was not given as much weight as it should have, the officer wrote.

"What is troubling for me, and also seems to be so for the probation officer, is the disconnect between Mr. Schmidt's remorse for the accident and the injuries he caused and his unwillingness to take full responsibility for his conduct in driving while impaired,” Veale said.

"His defensiveness at trial can be understood, but not in the pre-sentence report, where he effectively paints himself as a victim of the criminal process.”

Veale said Schmidt's remorse in causing the catastrophic injury to Frotten is genuine and has been evident from the outset.

The judge cites a video of Schmidt being interviewed by police following the crash in which he is often seen sobbing hysterically.

Veale called Schmidt's courtroom apology at his sentencing hearing earlier this year while facing the family of Frotten "complete and genuine.”

In it, Schmidt said he was deeply sorry for the damage that he had caused and hoped his sentence would help change the cavalier attitude in the territory toward drinking and driving.

The judge mentioned a number of impaired driving statistics for the territory, including a 2010 Statistics Canada report which found 408 incidents of the alcohol- or drug-impaired operation of a vehicle in the Yukon.

This compares to 727 incidents for Prince Edward Island, which has roughly four times the Yukon's population.

"Alcohol- and drug-impaired driving is a concern in the Yukon,” Veale said.

The Crown had asked for a jail sentence of between 18 and 24 months along with a driving prohibition of three years. The defence had argued that jail was not necessarily mandatory.

Schmidt is currently unemployed and has no criminal record. He received four tickets for speeding between 1998 and 2003.

At the earlier sentencing hearing, a victim impact statement from Frotten's mother was read into court.

"On December the 14, 2009, a beautiful young woman left our home and walked across our yard,” the statement read.

"She got into your car. That was the last time she walked. The doctors later told her it was the last time she would ever walk again.”

After describing the 28 days her daughter spent in intensive care in Edmonton and the painstaking work she has done since to try to regain mobility, Frotten's mother concludes that she wants Schmidt to have a placard on his car that provides a warning to anyone who drives with him:

"Because of my actions on December 14, 2009, a beautiful woman almost died and was left paralyzed. This was my fault.”