The Ohio Supreme Court has denied Mackenzie Shirilla’s motion for reconsideration, closing her last door at the state level to challenge her conviction for driving nearly 100 mph into a brick building and killing two people in 2022.
Chief Justice Sharon L. Kennedy issued a terse order rejecting Shirilla’s bid. The full text of the ruling: “It is ordered by the court that the motion for reconsideration in this case is denied.”
That one sentence ends years of state-level litigation by a woman convicted of four counts of murder, four counts of felonious assault, and two counts of aggravated vehicular homicide, all stemming from a crash in Strongsville, Ohio, that took the lives of her boyfriend, Dominic Russo, 20, and their friend Davion Flanagan, 19. Shirilla, now 21, is serving two concurrent sentences of 15 years to life.
The case turned on a deadline. Under Ohio law, a defendant must file a postconviction petition within 365 days after the trial transcript is filed in the court of appeals. Shirilla’s trial transcript was filed on Oct. 24, 2023. That set the deadline at Oct. 23, 2024.
Shirilla’s attorneys filed her petition on Oct. 24, 2024, the 366th day. One day late.
The lower court threw the petition out on timeliness grounds alone, never reaching the merits. Shirilla’s legal team tried two arguments to save the filing. First, they claimed the 2024 leap year meant a “calendar year” had not yet passed. Second, they argued the clock should have started when supplemental juvenile bindover transcripts were filed, not when the trial transcript hit the appellate court.
Neither argument worked. The appellate court found that the statute refers specifically to the “trial transcript,” not supplemental juvenile-hearing records, and that the law provides 365 days, not a calendar year. The distinction mattered by exactly one day.
The Ohio Supreme Court then declined to accept jurisdiction over Shirilla’s appeal on June 23, with Chief Justice Kennedy signing that order as well, as Fox News previously reported. Shirilla’s attorneys responded by asking the court to reconsider. That motion failed this week.
In 2022, Shirilla drove her Toyota Camry into a brick building in Strongsville, Ohio. Evidence presented at trial showed the car was traveling nearly 100 mph with no braking before impact, according to local outlet WOIO. Russo and Flanagan died. Prosecutors described Flanagan as an unintended victim who happened to be in the car.
Shirilla has maintained the crash was not intentional. Her defense team has pointed to a condition called POTS, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, which they argue could have caused her to lose consciousness before the collision. They contend her trial counsel failed to adequately investigate the condition.
A judge convicted Shirilla after a bench trial in 2023. She was sentenced on Aug. 21, 2023, in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court in Cleveland. Her convictions were upheld on direct appeal in 2024. High-profile court decisions like the Supreme Court’s reinstatement of a decades-old murder conviction remind the public that appellate courts take finality seriously, and Ohio’s highest court followed the same principle here.
Shirilla’s state appeals are now exhausted, but a federal petition filed in Ohio’s Northern District remains pending, arguing constitutional violations in her case. The outcome of that petition is uncertain, and federal habeas relief is a steep climb for any state prisoner.
The Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s office has not wavered. In a May 27 statement, the office said Prosecutor Michael O’Malley “believes without question that Mackenzie Shirilla is guilty of murder.”
Fox News Digital reported that it reached out to Shirilla’s attorney for comment but did not indicate a response was received.
The case gained fresh public attention after Netflix released a documentary called “The Crash.” The film brought the details of the Strongsville collision, the speed, the brick wall, the two young men who never came home, back into the national conversation. But public interest does not change filing deadlines, and the court made that clear.
Courts across the country have been issuing consequential rulings in recent months, from major Supreme Court decisions on asylum and deportation policy to lower courts grappling with redistricting challenges. In each case, procedural rules and statutory deadlines carry real weight, as Shirilla’s legal team learned the hard way.
Ohio’s legal system gave Shirilla a trial, a direct appeal, and a postconviction process with a clearly defined deadline. Her attorneys missed that deadline by a single day. The courts did not bend the rules to accommodate the error, and there is no indication they should have.
The legal battles playing out in Ohio’s courts on other fronts show a state judiciary willing to enforce the law as written, whether the subject is election integrity or a murder conviction.
Several questions linger. Who are Shirilla’s attorneys, and why has no one spoken publicly on her behalf since the ruling? What specific evidence of POTS was presented at trial, and what additional evidence does the defense claim was never investigated? And will the pending federal petition gain any traction, or will it meet the same fate as every state-level challenge?
The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction has confirmed Shirilla holds a prison job. She will be eligible for parole after serving 15 years, assuming no further legal developments change her sentence. For now, every avenue she has pursued in Ohio’s courts has ended the same way.
Across the judicial landscape, from federal judges denying redistricting challenges to state supreme courts enforcing filing deadlines, the message is consistent: rules matter, and courts are not in the business of granting do-overs.
Dominic Russo and Davion Flanagan are gone. Their families have watched appeal after appeal come and go. The law gave Mackenzie Shirilla 365 days to make her case. She showed up on day 366. That is not a technicality. That is the law doing exactly what it is supposed to do.
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