A woman serving 15 years to life after crashing her car into a wall at around 100mph — killing her boyfriend and his friend — has received a severe setback after her attorneys attempted to challenge the conviction.
Mackenzie Shirilla, from Ohio, was 17 at the time of the crash. Prosecutors said she had been driving around after a night of drug use with her boyfriend, Dominic Russo, 20, and his friend Davion Flanagan, 19.
In the early hours of the morning, shortly after 5.30am, and not long after leaving a friend’s home in Strongsville, CCTV captured Shirilla’s vehicle accelerating into a wall at speeds said to be over 100mph. A judge later characterized the incident as an attempted murder-suicide that she survived.
Following her conviction — after which she was labelled “hell on wheels” — Shirilla has spent roughly two and a half years in Ohio’s Reformatory for Women. She had sought a new trial via an appeal, but that effort has now been stopped.
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals determined that her legal team submitted the initial 2024 appeal 366 days after the conviction. Under Ohio rules, appeals must be filed within one year.
Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Nancy Margaret Russo, who presided over Shirilla’s 2023 case, sided with prosecutors that the filing came too late to be considered valid.
The judge ruled: “Because the appellant filed the petition on the 366th day following the filing of the trial transcript, the trial court was without jurisdiction to consider the merits of the claims, and the application of equitable tolling is prohibited in the context of this jurisdictional bar.”
“The court finds the state’s position well-taken, to wit: that the defendant’s petition is time-barred as a matter of law, having been filed past the statutory deadline,” Russo wrote in her decision.
She added: “As the filing by defendant was untimely, this court is without jurisdiction to consider the merits or arguments of any of the pleadings.
“Therefore, as the defendant’s petition is statutorily time-barred and filed out of rule, the court denies the petition for post-conviction relief.”
The decision is likely to bring some relief to the victims’ families. During sentencing, they had urged the court to make Shirilla’s two 15-years-to-life terms consecutive, which would have meant 30 years before parole eligibility.
Judge Russo — who is not related to Dominic Russo — rejected that request, indicating that Shirilla could still spend more than 15 years incarcerated when other penalties were factored in. Those included a drug trafficking sentence after authorities said a magic mushroom and scales were found in her vehicle.
At sentencing in 2023, the judge rejected the idea that the crash amounted to careless driving, calling it deliberate. She said it was ‘not reckless driving — this was murder’. Adding: “She had a mission, and she executed it with precision. The decision was death.”
After the trial, Dominic Russo’s father shared a measured reaction despite the loss, telling NBC.: “It’s horrible for everybody. Yeah, I lost my son, it’s harder on our family, but I don’t want the rest of her life ruined too. It isn’t going to make me feel any better.”