OWI vs DUI in Indiana: What the Difference Actually Means

· Written By Jerry L. Garner

The paperwork handed to you after an arrest does not always agree with itself. One page says OWI, another spells out operating while intoxicated, the officer said something else out loud, and every article you have found since calls it a DUI. If you have just been arrested in Evansville, Rockport, Tell City, Boonville, or anywhere else in Southern Indiana, the first thing worth settling is what those letters are and whether the difference between them changes anything about your case.

The short answer is that they are shorthand for the same kind of charge, and that Indiana’s version of it has a name of its own. The longer answer is worth the few minutes, because the letters are the part people fixate on and the part that matters least, while the facts that genuinely change what you are facing sit further down the same document.

What Does OWI Stand For?

OWI stands for operating while intoxicated. It is a compression of the name the statute gives the offense, and it is the term you will hear in an Indiana courthouse.

The name itself is in the chapter heading. IC 9-30-5 is titled Operating a Vehicle While Intoxicated, and the operative language in IC 9-30-5-2(a) is just as plain: a person who operates a vehicle while intoxicated commits a Class C misdemeanor. When the Code needs to refer back to an earlier conviction, in sections such as IC 9-30-5-3 and IC 9-30-5-15, it writes operating while intoxicated out in full.

What it never does is abbreviate. Search Titles 9 and 35 of the Indiana Code, the titles covering motor vehicles and criminal law, and the letters OWI do not appear once. Neither do OVWI, OMVWI, or DUI. The acronym in everyday use, lawyers included, is a convenience the statute itself does not share.

Why Indiana Says OWI and Other States Say DUI

The letters differ from place to place because the offense has a different name from place to place, and the shorthand follows the name. Indiana’s name is operating a vehicle while intoxicated, so the shorthand here is OWI. Where an offense is named driving under the influence, the shorthand is DUI. In Indiana there is one statute in play, so no choice of letters marks a lesser charge or a heavier one.

Here is what each set stands for, and what can honestly be said about it under Indiana law.

DUI

DUI stands for driving under the influence. It is almost certainly the term you typed into a search engine to get here.

In Indiana it is not the name of the charge. Those three letters appear nowhere in Titles 9 or 35. The phrase itself, spelled out, does turn up in one place worth knowing about: it is part of the section catchline of IC 9-30-5-8.5, which covers a driver under twenty-one with a blood or breath alcohol concentration of at least 0.02 but less than 0.08. So it would be wrong to say Indiana never uses those words. It is accurate to say Indiana does not use them to name the offense created by IC 9-30-5, which is the charge you are actually facing.

DWI

DWI stands for driving while intoxicated. It sits one word away from OWI, which is what makes the two easy to confuse.

Those letters appear nowhere in Titles 9 or 35 either, though the phrase spelled out does appear in IC 9-30-5-18, in that section’s operative text and not just its heading. The chapter you would be charged under is titled Operating a Vehicle While Intoxicated, and the shorthand that matches that title is OWI. If DWI is the term you know, treat it the way you would treat DUI: it points at the same subject, and it is not what Indiana’s statute is called.

OWI

OWI is the working term in Indiana. It is the shorthand lawyers, courts and police use day to day, and it tracks the phrase the Code itself uses, written out, when it refers to a prior conviction.

Notice the word the phrase does not contain: drunk. IC 9-13-2-86 defines intoxicated as being under the influence of any of a list of substances, alcohol and controlled substances and other drugs among them, so that there is an impaired condition of thought and action and the loss of normal control of a person’s faculties. Alcohol is one route into that definition and not the only one, which is why an OWI case does not always begin with a breath test result.

OVWI and OMVWI

Two longer acronyms circulate as well, both attempts to compress the same statutory phrase more completely.

OVWI stands for operating a vehicle while intoxicated, which is the chapter title word for word. It is not a separate offense. It is the same charge with one more letter in the abbreviation, and like OWI the letters themselves appear in neither title.

OMVWI stands for operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated, and this is the one worth pausing on, because it inserts a word Indiana left out. Search Titles 9 and 35 and the phrase motor vehicle while intoxicated does not appear at all. Indiana’s phrase is operating a vehicle while intoxicated, with no motor in it. You may still see OMVWI typed on local charging paperwork or in a sheriff’s report. If you do, it is somebody’s shorthand, not the name of a different charge.

The missing word carries real weight. For the operating while intoxicated chapter, IC 9-13-2-196(d) defines a vehicle as a device for transportation by land or air, and the only thing that definition excludes is an electric personal assistive mobility device. That is a wider net than the general definition earlier in the same section, which reaches only devices used on a highway and carves out human-powered devices, rail-bound devices, wheelchairs and electric foot scooters. Subsection (d) is the one that governs an OWI charge, and it carves out none of those. IC 9-30-5-9 points the same direction, providing that it is not a defense that a person was operating somewhere other than a highway.

One caution. A definition settles what counts as a vehicle and nothing else. Whether a particular set of facts supports a conviction is a separate question no definition answers on its own.

Does the Name Change What You Are Charged With?

No. Whichever letters someone typed on your paperwork, the statute is the same, and what moves a charge up or down is never the abbreviation. It is the numbers and the facts.

The baseline offense is a Class C misdemeanor. Under IC 9-30-5-1(a), operating a vehicle with a blood or breath alcohol concentration of at least 0.08 but less than 0.15 is a Class C misdemeanor, and under IC 9-30-5-2(a) so is operating a vehicle while intoxicated without anything more. IC 35-50-3-4 caps a Class C misdemeanor at sixty days and a fine of $500.

Two things raise that to a Class A misdemeanor. Under IC 9-30-5-1(b) a concentration of at least 0.15 is a Class A misdemeanor, and under IC 9-30-5-2(b) so is operating a vehicle in a manner that endangers a person. IC 35-50-3-2 puts a Class A misdemeanor at up to one year and a fine of up to $5,000. Those are the figures for those two situations. They are not the figures for a first arrest at 0.09 with nobody endangered, which sits at the Class C ceiling of sixty days and $500.

A charge can also be a felony from the start, depending on what else is in the file:

  • Under IC 9-30-5-3(a), a violation is a Level 6 felony where the person has a previous conviction of operating while intoxicated within the seven years before it. The same subsection reaches a second route involving a passenger under eighteen.
  • Under IC 9-30-5-4(a), causing serious bodily injury to another person is a Level 5 felony, and a Level 4 felony where there is a previous operating while intoxicated conviction within the preceding five years.
  • Under IC 9-30-5-5(a), causing the death or catastrophic injury of another person is a Level 4 felony.

Our guide to Indiana’s felony levels and sentence ranges sets out what each of those levels carries.

Two more numbers belong in this discussion, and neither one is a criminal charge. A driver under twenty-one with a concentration of at least 0.02 but less than 0.08 commits a Class C infraction under IC 9-30-5-8.5, and a commercial driver at least 0.04 but less than 0.08 commits a Class C infraction under IC 9-24-6.1-6. An infraction is a civil violation, not a crime. Once either driver reaches 0.08, they are charged under IC 9-30-5-1 like anybody else.

What an OWI Charge Involves in Southern Indiana

Once the letters are out of the way, an OWI arrest is two problems running at the same time.

The first is the criminal charge, which moves through the court in the county where the stop happened, which for this office means Vanderburgh, Warrick, Spencer or Perry County. That is where the classification above sets the exposure, and where the record the state built that night either holds up or does not: the reason for the stop, how field sobriety testing was administered, the three-hour window in IC 9-30-6-2 for a chemical test, and the maintenance and chain-of-custody paperwork behind a result. Our Indiana OWI and DUI defense page walks through that record in the order a defense examines it.

The second is your driver’s license, and it does not wait for the criminal case. A failed chemical test or a refusal starts an administrative suspension under IC 9-30-6-9, where a refusal draws a longer suspension than a failed test does, and refusing also bears on whether you can ask a court for limited driving privileges at all. That track has its own deadlines and its own filings, separate from anything happening in the criminal case.

Jerry L. Garner spent years as an FBI Special Agent before moving into criminal defense. The practical value of that background is not the title. It is that he spent those years on the side that assembles criminal cases, and knowing how an investigative file gets built is knowing where one tends to be thin.

He represents clients facing operating while intoxicated charges throughout Vanderburgh, Warrick, Spencer and Perry counties, from the Evansville area to Rockport, Tell City, and Boonville.

Contact Us for Help

If you have been arrested for OWI in Southern Indiana, the earlier a defense begins the more of the case is still open to work with, and that is particularly true on the license side, which runs on its own timetable rather than the court’s. Call our office at (812) 301-6221 or contact us online to talk it through, and bring whatever paperwork you were handed, including anything about your license.

Remember: the letters on your paperwork are shorthand, and nothing turns on which set somebody typed. What decides the charge is IC 9-30-5, the concentration, whether anyone was endangered, and what is already on your record.

This blog post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Every case is unique, and outcomes depend on specific circumstances. Contact our office to discuss your particular situation.