Background
Tawk Hre crashed his vehicle into Katie Mumford’s car in January 2025. Testing showed an alcohol concentration equivalent of .277 grams of alcohol per 100 milliliters of blood. Hre later pleaded guilty under a plea agreement to Class A misdemeanor operating a vehicle while intoxicated. The Marion Superior Court sentenced him to 360 days, with 356 days suspended to probation, and reserved restitution for a later hearing.
While Mumford waited for insurance to address the damage to her car, she used Uber, Lyft, and a rental car to travel to work and elsewhere. At the restitution hearing, she presented receipts showing $521.35 in rideshare expenses from January 17 through January 30, 2025, and $1,122.12 in rental-car expenses from January 30 through February 14. The trial court declined to award the rideshare costs but ordered Hre to pay the full rental-car bill. Hre appealed that portion of the restitution order.
The appeal therefore presented a narrow question: whether alternative-transportation costs are among the losses an Indiana criminal court may include in restitution. Although the rental was a foreseeable consequence of losing access to a damaged vehicle, Hre argued that foreseeability alone could not expand the categories the General Assembly had placed in the restitution statute.
The Court’s Holding
The Indiana Court of Appeals reversed. Indiana Code section 35-50-5-3 permits restitution for five specified kinds of loss: property damage measured by actual repair or replacement cost; qualifying medical and hospital costs; certain medical laboratory tests; earnings lost before sentencing; and funeral, burial, or cremation costs arising from a homicide. Because restitution is penal in nature, the court explained, those statutory categories must be strictly construed against the State rather than enlarged beyond the language the legislature used.
The panel treated its 2018 decision in Person v. State as controlling. In Person, a victim incurred public-transportation expenses after the defendant damaged her car, and the Court of Appeals held that those costs did not fit any statutory category. Mumford’s rental-car bill was functionally indistinguishable: both expenses paid for substitute transportation while a crime victim lacked use of a vehicle. Neither was the actual cost of repairing or replacing the damaged property.
The court also distinguished Akehurst v. State, where restitution covered the remaining balance on a loan for a totaled van. That balance formed part of the actual replacement cost and thus fell within the statute’s property-damage provision. Hre, by contrast, was not ordered to reimburse the price of replacing Mumford’s car. The rental expense was a separate consequential loss. The panel acknowledged that reimbursing such expenses might make sense as public policy, but said adding that remedy is a task for the General Assembly. It remanded with instructions to enter a corrected restitution order.
Key Takeaways
- Indiana criminal restitution is limited to the loss categories enumerated in Indiana Code section 35-50-5-3; a causal connection to the offense does not by itself make an expense recoverable.
- Rental cars, rideshares, and public transit are all forms of alternative transportation, and the court viewed their costs as outside the statute even when a defendant’s conduct made them necessary.
- Actual repair or replacement costs remain recoverable property damage, but consequential costs arising from the victim’s temporary loss of use require separate statutory authorization.
Why It Matters
Hre gives Indiana trial lawyers a clear classification rule for restitution evidence. Prosecutors and victim advocates should separate repair and replacement figures from loss-of-use expenses before a hearing, while defense counsel should test each requested amount against the statute’s text rather than only disputing whether the expense was reasonable or caused by the crime. A receipt and an obvious causal link are insufficient when the kind of loss is not authorized.
The decision also reinforces a broader statutory-interpretation principle in Indiana criminal practice: courts strictly construe penal restitution provisions even when that produces a gap between a victim’s real economic losses and the compensation available in the criminal case. Unless the legislature amends the statute, recovery of rental-car and similar transportation costs may have to be pursued through insurance or civil remedies rather than a criminal restitution order.