Mackenzie Shirilla’s legal team has put forward an unexpected argument after the Supreme Court of Ohio again refused to take up her appeal, following her 2023 murder conviction.
The latest setback came after the Ohio Supreme Court declined to review a post-conviction filing tied to the case, leaving in place lower-court rulings that rejected Shirilla’s bid for relief as untimely. It was the newest attempt by the former teenager to reopen a case that has already been reviewed by multiple courts.
Shirilla has now tried three times to challenge the outcome of her case. Two efforts were made through Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court and another through the Eighth District Court of Appeals, but each attempt was ultimately rejected by Ohio courts.
The Ohio woman was 17 in 2022 when she drove her car at 100mph into a brick wall, killing her 20-year-old boyfriend Dominic Russo and 19-year-old friend Davion Flanagan, who were both in the passenger seats.
Shirilla has maintained that a medical issue caused her to lose control while driving. But in 2023, a judge concluded the crash was instead a ‘controlled, methodical, deliberate, intentional, and purposeful’ act of murder, leading to two concurrent life sentences.
A Netflix documentary called The Crash, released in 2026, looks back at the high-profile case, which sparked intense public debate, and includes Shirilla speaking publicly for the first time since being found guilty.
During the latest push to overturn the conviction, her lawyers argued that the now-21-year-old may not have been fully conscious at the time of the collision.
“There is medical evidence that Mackenzie Shirilla suffered from a pre-existing medical condition that could have caused her to black out while driving.”
Her legal team also said in court filings that her petition for post-conviction relief had been dismissed because it missed the filing deadline.
In response, the court said Shirilla had ‘miscalendared’ the deadline.
“The trial transcripts were filed in her direct appeal on October 23, 2023, triggering the 365-day statutory clock to file the petition.
“Shirilla filed her petition on October 24, 2024, which is the same day that many of her exhibits were notarized.
“Because 2024 was a leap year, Shirilla’s petition was late by one day. The trial court properly denied her petition as untimely.”
Shirilla’s earlier challenge to her convictions also failed on direct appeal, with Ohio’s Eighth District Court of Appeals upholding the trial court’s judgment in 2024. A later request for the state’s highest court to review the case was also rejected, and the newest ruling means her conviction and life sentences remain intact for now.
When the verdict was delivered in 2023, the judge said: “This was not reckless driving – this was murder.
“She had a mission, and she executed it with precision. The decision was death.”
Shirilla is still being held at the Ohio Reformatory for Women and remains eligible for parole after serving 15 years.